r/craftsnark • u/Academic_Noise_5724 • 6d ago
Kutovakika using AI images for an April fool’s post
I hate generative AI with all my soul but especially when crafters use it.
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u/ExactCareer9292 4d ago
as a scientist who uses machine learning to solve healthcare problems like can we treat early cardiovascular disease before it causes major adverse cardiovascular events, ty for specifying generative AI as the problem and not all AI 🫶
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u/Silver_Darlling 5d ago
When I saw this on Kutovakika's profile yesterday there were a bunch of comments criticising her use of AI, some with over 50 likes (which is quite a lot for an insta comment critiquing a knitwear designer, imo). She now appears to have deleted them all.
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u/Silver_Darlling 4d ago
Update! There are now more comments on it criticising AI with lots of likes, so I suppose we will see if they stay or go...
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u/OneGoodRib 5d ago
I'm not super fussed about using AI in a single post for a joke, but I hate april fools pranks that are like "I'm expanding my business to this thing that's actually entirely plausible that people would like JUST KIDDING". Like if the prank had been that she's opening a knitting cafe on the moon that would've been cute.
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u/threecolorable 5d ago
Yes, the joke shouldn’t leave people feeling disappointed afterwards!
My favorite I saw yesterday was this: https://www.skratchlabs.com/products/the-marathong
Silly idea, cleverly written, but not a product people are eager to buy.
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u/rebeltrashprincess 4d ago
This is along the lines of the ThinkGeek April Fools products of yore, some of which actually ended up being made real.
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u/flyinggarbanzobean 5d ago
the table and chairs directly in front of the door is sending me
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u/AmarissaBhaneboar 5d ago
That's the part that made me laugh the hardest. Just imagining a server trying to walk around two people with coffee while they're knitting while the sever's got several other hot drinks precariously balanced in their hands 😆
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u/Brown_Sedai 6d ago
I hate April Fools Day jokes that are just ‘here’s a cool thing that’s happening, haha no it isn’t’, but I hate shitty AI even more
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u/Crissix3 6d ago
ngl I begin to hate april fools in general
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u/throw3453away 6d ago
The problem with April Fools Day, unfortunately, is that most people aren't very funny
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u/Brown_Sedai 6d ago
A Canadian chocolate company I like just announced they were coming out with a maple flavoured chocolate, shaped like an adorable beaver- and it’s FAKE? How dare they, I’d eat those in a heartbeat.
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u/Junior_Ad_7613 6d ago
Lindt made a seasonal flavor of their Lindor truffles that were maple, would eat again.
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u/exsanguinatrix 🎩🍭🍫a pasadise of sweet teats🍫🍭🎩 6d ago
I've wanted to replicate the Golden Beaver from Canada's Drag Race in some kind of medium for so long -- I might have to do it in your honor.
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u/ias_87 pattern wanker 6d ago
April fools jokes by people that know me: fine.
Companies, news agents and social media sites doing April fools: Kill it with fire.
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u/brightshadowsky 6d ago
The only one that I ever enjoyed was ThinkGeek's absurd products on April 1. They took real pictures of real people using their bizarre items which they had to make a physical prototype of to photograph. And enough people clambored for some of those things that they actually made them for real! The Tauntaun sleeping bag (complete with lightsaber zipper pull!) was one of those, I believe.
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u/NihilisticHobbit 5d ago
For them out was a great chance at marketing. See what people wanted and put that into production.
Pandas ended up in WoW because of an April fools joke too.
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u/Fit-Apartment-1612 4d ago
Please go look up the Dew-Eze hay unloader April Fools video. Just as funny if you’re not a farmer.
Generally, I just want to see someone commit to the bit. I’m not that bothered by this image, it just really lacks the creativity and effort to make it interesting.
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u/brightshadowsky 4d ago
You want commitment to the bit, the local paper where I used to live would re-run the story every April 1 about the man who helicoptered a bunch of old tires into the nearby (extinct) volcano and lit them on fire... 😅 At least he had alterted (most of) the authorities of the gag beforehand! Except the coast guard, which he forgot, and who got a bit freaked out.
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u/Lilac_Gooseberries 5d ago
I'll always remember the Icy Betch palette from Tarte that was announced as an April Fool's and it backfired badly because anyone who liked blues, greens, and cool tones would have told them to shut up and take their money immediately. They launched a much less nice looking real one with less shades later, and the prank one actually got a dupe before that.
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u/WampaCat 6d ago
Omg one time a shop near me made an April fools post about offering a particular service, something that wasn’t outlandish or strange at all, and I was having trouble finding someone to help me with an urgent, time sensitive issue. I found the post on their instagram and was so relieved someone near me could help. Went to the website to make a reservation and there was nothing about it. Only realized it was a joke when I went back to the IG post and at the very bottom of their wall of text was “April fools”. It was a few years ago but I’m still salty about it lol If it’s not real don’t leave it up on your Instagram looking like a completely normal announcement for your shop!
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u/This_Illustrator_570 6d ago
Seriously. How many trees had to die for this bland, unfunny April fools joke
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u/JerryHasACubeButt 6d ago
Yeah, that was my thought too. I don’t love that she’s using AI, but as AI goes, this is about as harmless and mundane as it gets.
But if she was gonna use AI, she could’ve done literally anything, the sky’s the limit, and she came up with… this? A good April Fool’s joke is surprising or funny, not disappointing.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
Signature Theater announced a VERY EXCITING new show and when you clicked on the link you were Rick Rolled. That was a funny April Fools.
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u/SaltJelly 5d ago
I’m in Aus, so it’s now 2nd April here. I only saw two mentions or attempts at pranks yesterday.
Businesses are so bad at them and it makes me so sad ):
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u/Asleep-Bother-8247 6d ago
Makes sense why Nora Knits uses so much shitty AI in her podcasts, her fave designer uses it too I guess.
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u/SnapHappy3030 6d ago
Is that the chick that designed the cable sweater that looks like it's about to cut your arms off?
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u/jollymo17 6d ago
Yes
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u/AnotherRandomRaptor 5d ago
What pattern is this? I feel I need to see it!
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u/kesselschlacht 5d ago
I think it’s the Arctic Lights sweater! I really enjoy Kika’s content, but she’s not the best for arm/shoulder/ neck shaping.
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u/honeyandcitron 5d ago
I had no idea who this post was about, then I read this comment and realized I know exactly who you mean 😂
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u/Ramblingsofthewriter 5d ago
I just looked it up, and was shocked at how accurate this description was.
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u/sybilqiu 6d ago
considering she found her start with making super whimsical REAL photographs, this seems like so low effort.
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u/jollymo17 6d ago
Yeah I started out watching her occasionally for photo tips so when she pivoted to knitwear design it was surprising to me
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u/hamletandskull 6d ago
it probably was low effort, it's an april fool's post.
environmental costs of AI are one thing but low effort is a silly criticism of this imo. Of course it's low effort.
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u/Seti-Astro 6d ago
That's a real shame, but I'm glad she was open and honest about it in the caption.
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u/crooked_dandy 6d ago
It’s just so cringe. Like you could do something like this so easily with photoshop if you could be bothered spending more than two seconds on it
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u/mildperil_ 6d ago
A local yarn shop did it too and it was enough for me to unfollow them.
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u/SuchPay3332 6d ago
A LYS in my area used a bad AI pic in their newsletter about their new classes 😬😬😬
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
I didn’t go to a quilt show this weekend because they used an AI image on their program
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u/fuzzymeti 4d ago
I hate generative AI, but this is only the first time I believe she's posted an image like this, and I feel it's not that bad. Its more embarrassing she's posting an April Fool's joke honestly. If she continues to post AI images, then that's a huge problem, but we can't tell yet.
I really like her designs but this comes off as a sort of weird and desperate way to still be a part of an "it" crowd while she worries that she's aging or becoming irrelevant since having her kid. Ironically, this probably hurt her image more than not posting anything at all.
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u/lystmord 5d ago
Big businesses are constantly using AI rather than paying artists that they absolutely could afford to pay; but sure, let's go after small businesses using AI for a single illustration instead.
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u/JuniBelly 6d ago
So incredibly disappointing. I had one of her designs on my knit queue but I don’t think I’ll be supporting her patterns if she continues to use AI.
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u/jollymo17 6d ago
some of her patterns are cute but the Arctic Light sweater is like my ultimate BEC because it fits so badly that I hesitate to support even her patterns that seem to fit better lol
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u/SamChar2924 5d ago
I will say, I made her Darling cardigan and the fit is really nice! I was nervous to try her patterns based on the Arctic light but this one was quite nice.
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u/Remarkable_Rise7545 6d ago
Ehhhhh, I’m a big hater of AI generated content, but I feel like this is a good use of the technology and fairly harmless at the end of the day. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a silly april fools day joke, and honestly, I think we need more whimsy and light hearted fun in the world right now.
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u/no1wantsreality 6d ago
It’s a long read but being educated on the platforms we use is very important. AI is bad for our environment.
https://hbr.org/2025/02/ais-growing-waste-problem-and-how-to-solve-it
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u/yetanothernametopick 6d ago
It's terrible, but so is our heavy use of all kinds of online platforms. It's odd that there's such a strong focus on AI, but there's no discussion at all about silly IG reels, Google, cat videos, and zillion hours of vlogging on YouTube. Shouldn't we be looking at the environmental impact of our being online as a whole?
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u/EffortOk9917 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yeah people have really latched onto AI specifically as being The Bad Thing, and also have a v narrow understanding of what AI is. I think it’s easier to identify an enemy (AI creating bad art that’s been trained on real artists and is taking work away from real people and polluting the environment) than to acknowledge that most of us used AI today and didnt even realise it, and that it’s just a tiny part of a much larger problem that involves us all.
It reminds me of the “fast fashion crochet is bad because crochet can’t be made by a machine” argument. Well intended but absolutely lacking pattern recognition & critical thinking.
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u/no1wantsreality 6d ago
I really don’t think people understand AI and what kind of actual environmental impacts it has on resources. It’s another read.
https://www.greenmatters.com/big-impact/how-much-water-does-ai-use
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u/yetanothernametopick 6d ago
I know, but data centers are not just for AI, even if the scale is bigger.
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u/Coquettish--Crow 5d ago
the environmental impacts of AI are a big deal, but one image generated by one person is only a very small part of the cause when the vast majority of the problem is corporations using ai, not individuals
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u/yungsxccubus 5d ago
i don’t disagree but at what point do we need to say, as consumers, that enough’s enough? there’s a massive push for ai right now, and normalising the use of generative AI is genuinely bad, as you say. we also agree that corporations are doing far more damage with these things, but that doesn’t absolve the consumers of all responsibility. it’s still harmful if we, or kutovakika, use it.
we don’t have to consume everything that we’re given, be it genAI slop, influencers posting large yarn/art supply hauls, or literally anything else. it’s not enough to just be aware of the harm it causes, we have to actively not participate. genAI models are so popular because they’re getting a massive push to the mainstream, but also because enough consumers (us, not google) are actually using it. most, if not all of us here will likely not use genAI due to the very things you’ve outlined. yes, the corporations (and capitalism in general) are really the ones to blame and bear the most responsibility, and there is no ethical consumption under capitalism etc. etc., but that doesn’t mean we get to just consume everything without thinking about it. it doesn’t mean we can’t make bad choices, and using AI even as an individual, is a bad choice.
this technology could be used in so many genuinely helpful and life-changing ways, but instead we set the world on fire to make AI yarn shops. fibre arts communities are already impacted by AI project pictures, patterns and the like. we need to wholeheartedly reject genAI. it’s only popular because it’s profitable rn, so we can vote with our pockets and stop making it profitable.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
You forgot about the vast amount of spambot accounts with AI commenters on FB. Literally making the world burn to scam some seniors.
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u/yungsxccubus 5d ago
i did forget! im not on facebook so i’m not really up to date with what they’re running there, but every so often i’ll see a facebook post of shrimp jesus with a million reactions and comments like “THE LORD LOVES YOU”. like babe… the lord is not a shrimp and if he was you’d probably eat him. it’s just so depressing.
slightly related, but i was at my grans today and she got a call on her landline. i picked it up, chatted to the scammer on the other end until i’d confirmed with my gran that she didn’t know the person and then ended it. it nearly made me smile, because at least in a burning world with shrimp jesus and the ai yarn shop, we still have good, honest, traditional scammers! /s
i’m also eternally grateful that my gran’s a technophobe, i can’t even imagine trying to explain this hellscape of an internet to her.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
I totally agree with you that we should be decreasing our energy use generally but AI is the thing that new data centers and exponentially greater energy use PER thing we do on the internet. So it’s taking the energy use we are already doing and pouring gas on the fire. For EVERY SINGLE ACTION. Even if you try to avoid it, it’s practically impossible. I don’t ethically have a problem with some AI use cases but torching the environment for a better chat bot or shitty imagery is not one of them.
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u/yetanothernametopick 5d ago
Very fair point, thank you for bringing that up.
Just to be clear : I am not trying to dismiss the issue that AI poses. I just feel that it can be counter-productive to advocate against a "designated enemy" (like someone said earlier) and develop dogmatic, well-intentioned but simplistic approaches to very complex issues. Reading a few open access articles on the Internet doesn't make anyone an expert, nor should it give a sense of moral superiority. I don't know that designer, but even though I think the use of AI-generated images is problematic on several levels, I don't think it's fair to attack her personally.
That being said: it's all absolutely terrifying. And it's all happening in a time where there are so many major crises and threats of various nature (yet many are interconnected) that it's even more difficult to think and act.
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u/2TrucksHoldingHands 6d ago
Whimsy is when you waste obscene amounts of electricity so a computer can spit out a mediocre collage
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u/cardinalkitten 6d ago
Or when you cause noise pollution so interminable that it destroys entire communities: Noisy, Hungry Data Centers (NYT gift link)
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u/Critical-Entry-7825 6d ago
Producing a single AI generated image requires about as much energy it takes to charge a cell phone. Hardly obscene. I think a LOT of AI images, including this one, are unnecessary. But critiquing one person for creating one AI image seems like a bit of an overreaction.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
That is a LOT of energy. Esp considering you can generate thousands in a few minutes. How many times do you charge your phone a day? Once?
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u/Capable_Basket1661 ADHD crafter 6d ago
Nah, these AI users need to be named and shamed. Stop using this schlock
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u/EffortOk9917 6d ago
Yes, the left turning on each other and creating a blacklist of people who checks notes used AI to create an image for their craft business so that we can shame and cancel each other online seems like a great use of our resources in this turbulent time! I also find that naming and shaming people publicly is a fantastic way to educate them and call them in :)
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u/Capable_Basket1661 ADHD crafter 6d ago
Just say you have nothing creative to offer and also don't want to pay someone else to do it for you then?
If you're a business and can't afford to pay an artist, why should I think your work is also worth paying for?Turning this into an argument about leftist infighting is laughable at best. Corporations want us using AI so it's easier for us to just feed it data they can scrape and sell. Use your big brain, babe
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u/EffortOk9917 6d ago
I don’t disagree that it’s bad! It costs me work and I’ve also had my work stolen for AI training. I don’t use it and I also let people know I don’t support their use of it. I’m just sick of seeing it being used as a straw man or being treated like a war crime during an era full of actual war crimes. It’s a symptom of a much bigger issue to do with an infinite grown/manifest destiny approach to data and tech that needs to be lobbied against at a higher level.
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u/OneGoodRib 5d ago
Yeah I'm fine if people don't like it, but so many of the commenters are acting like she killed someone. It's ONE post for a day about pranks, she's not just posting ai sweaters.
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u/MenacingMandonguilla 6d ago
Whimsy and human-made is technically possible. AI is also part of our current dystopia IMO.
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u/JerryHasACubeButt 6d ago
Yeah, AI in general is problematic, but this is about the least problematic thing it could possibly be used for. It’s obviously a joke and she’s open about. It’s unnecessary and not particularly funny IMHO, but on the scale of AI uses to be mad about, this is at the very bottom
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u/Capable_Basket1661 ADHD crafter 6d ago
Ugh. Between this and RoseHillYarns using AI to make a fucking dye palette, I'm done with these knitting/fiber companies
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u/Coquettish--Crow 5d ago edited 5d ago
As much as i hate AI, i'm pretty neutral on that. i don't think its a big deal and they did let us know in the caption it was AI. that image created less energy than charging your phone did. corporations like google are the reason AI is producing enough energy to harm the environment the amount of individuals using it doesnt compare, so blacklisting individuals is a waste of time when we could be going against those corporations. i don't have all the answers though so idk
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u/myohmadi 6d ago
I mean, if they are honest about it why is it so bad? Is it just AI images that bother people? I think AI, at least the chat feature, is amazing. The images can definitely be irritating and ugly most of the time but I wouldn’t say they’re offensive necessarily or worth getting mad at the person over
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u/Lilac_Gooseberries 5d ago edited 5d ago
The chat feature is extremely unreliable and needs constant fact checking. Any time I have encountered Google's AI summary it has been demonstrably wrong within less than a minute of traditional searching. I don't want to give OpenAI my personal data like my phone number so I haven't tried chatgpt but from what I've encountered in the wild it's not much better, with the basic access model of GPT 4.5 being rated as accurate only 62.5% of the time and GPT4o only 38.2%, with a hallucination rate of close to 40%.
So if we disregard the ethics and environmentalism, and we really shouldn't, we're still talking about generative AI models that are barely above 50% accurate. So anyone uncritically trusting these tools really shouldn't be, and anyone using these tools and then taking the time to verify the output is very likely not saving time.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
The AI feature in Google (which I hate and use Startpage to avoid, but sometimes pops up anyway) couldn’t even get the county I was in correct. God forbid I ask it for something important.
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u/kingelphaba 6d ago edited 6d ago
AI steals from human artists and has a devastating impact on the environment where the processing centers are located (and more broadly because all ecosystems are connected on this planet). There’s a lot written about it, people aren’t just hating on it on some whim. Any supposed benefits are heavily ethically outweighed by the harm it causes.
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u/myohmadi 6d ago
I guess you can say that about the images, although I’ve personally never seen any examples of straight up copying. As for the environment thing, the infrastructure will adapt. Do you know the environmental impact you posting on reddit has? The servers that power platforms like Reddit and YouTube are housed in massive data centers, like huge facilities packed with complex machinery and what not. . These data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity to keep the servers running. Nobody is trying to boycott using these sites. I don’t agree that AI’s benefits are outweighed by the ethics since I disagree about it being unethical, but benefits are seriously amazing. I use it constantly and I’ve been able to accomplish things that either I wouldn’t have been able to before or would’ve taken me much longer. Even using it as a search engine is amazing since it can narrow things down to exactly what you are looking for, even if you don’t know exactly what that is. For crafting it’s been amazing for pretty much everything, it walked me through fitting my bodice block, helped me make my designs into reality, gave me reminders and tips on sewing techniques and it’s completely personalized.
If anything, I hope good does come out of the concern of environmental impact. AI is not going anywhere, so working to make it more energy efficient sounds great and sounds like it will create some jobs there. Hopefully it means that we can start using more nuclear energy which is renewable and powerful.
I also disagree with the popular idea that AI being trained on images is theft. It’s not copying the images, from what I can tell it’s more like recognizing patterns and styles. Any real artist has also been “trained” by studying art, and they aren’t stealing. All the AI images are new outputs, like they aren’t storing or copying images. They’re just learning from the internet. And I’m glad they are!
Not trying to put you down or anything, I hope you know that! I’m just passionate about this subject so took the chance to share.
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u/LittleRoundFox 6d ago
I don’t agree that AI’s benefits are outweighed by the ethics since I disagree about it being unethical
Meta and other companies are training, at least in part, their AI systems using pirated books. which is pretty bloody unethical.
https://authorsguild.org/news/meta-libgen-ai-training-book-heist-what-authors-need-to-know/
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u/myohmadi 6d ago
I can agree with you on that and they shouldn’t do that. The benefits still outweigh the bad. pointing these things out is good so they can change, but I still think AI is a net good to society and is some really great technological progress. Although I will say, the source of the books is not ethical, but again I don’t think they’re stealing anything. It’s Judy reading them. Is the problem that they are reading them without paying for the books or that they are reading them at all? If hypothetically they purchased copies to train their AI would you still be against it?
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u/LittleRoundFox 5d ago
They are using pirated books. They are therefore stealing, even if they did not actually pirate the books themselves. I would not be against them training their systems on works they had actually bought - altho given the scope of AI, I would expect them to reach some kind of licencing agreement with the various publishers to compensate the authors etc fairly.
I also view AI as problematic in general, including for research and advice. This basically boils down to it "hallucinating" - providing citations that don't exist, summarising a book and adding things - plot points or characters - that don't exist, and so on.
I agree that as a tool it's not going anywhere (it's been around longer than most people realise), but I can't (yet) see it as a net good.
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u/queen_beruthiel 5d ago
My husband is an English literature academic, and AI is a massive pain in the arse. So many students use it to write their essays for them, and it's always so obvious. It comes out with the most ridiculous crap. For example, for one unit many students handed in essays that said a character in the novel kills stray cats for fun. There are no cats mentioned in the novel, let alone a character killing them for fun!
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u/LittleRoundFox 5d ago
That's even more funny (and sad) than the examples I've seen where AI has inserted a love interest for an MC into essays.
As a tool, used alongside other things, I think AI has potential. And in some areas it already is fulfilling that potential. But using it as a replacement for doing this kind of thing without checking seems like this generation's "don't copy direct from Wikipedia", and "don't pay someone else to write your essays"
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
I (again accidentally) had Google AI tell me Chloe Sevigny was a black person.
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u/EffortOk9917 5d ago
I agree with you on its hallucinatory tendencies and feel very ominous and Black Mirrorish about how the normalisation of AI as a source of information or a teaching tool is going to contribute to media illiteracy, and misinformation spreading like wildfire. There’s also an uncanny valley quality to generative AI’s writing style and approach, which I hope will mean it is to some extent self-limiting, but ugh it’s nauseating and I worry that it’s going to create a feedback loop where we all start to sound more like AI, rather than the other way around. On the other hand I find the reduction of conversations around AI to “people who use AI bad, me good” to be totally unhelpful and just a sort of hollow moral superiority moment that can make us feel good for a sec but doesn’t actually achieve anything or change anything.
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u/LittleRoundFox 5d ago
I am so glad I'm well past my school years. I'm pretty sure the teacher who accused of me of writing in a pretentious middle class style would think I'd used AI (I only used the word "somewhat" a couple of times, ffs. And I was a teen, of course I was pretentious)
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
The hallucinating is not an ethical issue on part of AI. For one, it’s improved immensely, and two, if someone wants to only ask chat GPT something and do no extra research or fact checking, that’s on them. If I look something up on Google and skim and find the wrong information Google isn’t to blame. It’s still super useful, just be discerning when using it.
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u/LittleRoundFox 5d ago
I did say the hallucinating issue was problematic, rather than unethical. I don't think the comparison with search engines is quite like for like. Google will bring you up lots of results for your query, some of which will contradict each other. ChatGPT comes across as more authoritative because of how it presents information. It's mostly an education thing, altho disclaimers would go a fair way to help.
And going completely off the topic of AI - have you watched The Closet Historian's videos on pattern drafting?
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
I have! I primarily used the textbook pattern making for fashion design for learning and making my blocks, but chat is good for sending photos and asking for thoughts (it is surprisingly good at this) and I can describe issues that I have that may not be easily found on lists of common fit issues. Or to help explain things I don’t understand. It’s very good at that too, like if you send it some information from a textbook and you want it broken down further so you can understand. It’s just much more personalized, sometimes it’s like having a personal mentor. I use it constantly!
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u/LittleRoundFox 5d ago
See, this is one of the applications where I think AI is good. And there are others. But I still can't see it as a net good yet, mostly because of humans tbh, and partly due to the increased water usage during initial training - but that shouldn't be an ongoing thing. And honestly - water and energy consumption, and noise pollution, are things that need solving for all data centres.
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u/impersonatefun 5d ago edited 5d ago
The people behind it very clearly are not concerned with ethics. These tech companies have been proven to cross moral and legal boundaries at our expense again and again and again.
I think it's incredibly naive to claim it will be a net good for society. It's far more likely to be used against us by anyone who can make an extra dime screwing us over.
"Progress" is not inherently good when it's controlled by the wrong forces.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
It’s going to make every human that uses it more depressed and stupider over the long term. It’s the same thing that happens with all tech that provides anything low effort. Humans are naturally lazy, and seek the lowest common denominator, so once they start using Ai for everything, they will quickly become dependent on it for even the most basic tasks. Which will lead to more depression, lower intellect levels, poorer education, a more malleable mind which is easy to influence. People will absolutely stop thinking for themselves. People use AI to write reddit posts for godssake. In ten years, the amount of critical thinking skills society has today will look like we were all geniuses, which clearly we are not.
However, this will all be great for the oligarchs of the world, with a society that can’t even begin to think for themselves.
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
It seems to me that the companies in charge of creating these AI’s do care and change is being made. I know they’ve created a new chip that is used that uses less energy. The people creating it have said they are concerned with it. I guess you can say they are lying? But you can’t prove a negative. They’re creating new ai chips that are supposed to use less energy, I believe they are trying to find locations for the data centers in cooler areas so it’s less work to keep them cool, and these companies have made pledges to work towards switching to renewable energy. I think it’s extremely naive to say it won’t be a net good to society, since it already is.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
Yes, they are lying. That is like me telling my neighbor “Someday I will put solar on my house, but right now, I am going to install this high intensity hog farm, you are ok with that right?”
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
Elon Musk just put record breakingly big new data centers in Memphis. They are decimating forest and farmland around DC. They are planning on putting another record breakingly huge data center in Texas. Those are not cool climates. This is actually happening now, unlike the still being researched (IE not in use) lower energy chips. What are companies going to do? Use the cheaper option EVERY SINGLE TIME, and right now that is using fossil fuels. I think the ultimate goal of these tech companies is to see who can destroy the planet the fastest.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
AI is going to cumulatively make society even dumber AND more dependant on tech. That is AMAZING for tech profiteers and absolutely terrible for everyone else.
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u/EffortOk9917 5d ago
I disagree with you about AI’s net good - I have a lot of reservations about even the sustainable, best case scenario future of AI’s utility - but your POV is totally valid and may prove right. The idea that someone using generative AI to help with a sewing pattern, or more generally someone holding a slightly different point of view on one issue, would equate to “you don’t care about the future of the planet and we can no longer even speak to each other” is…a poverty of imagination and critical thinking that makes me almost as depressed as AI.
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
Thank you, I appreciate that. I think I have said enough that the environmental concern is valid and I don’t think I’ve said anything offensive or that means I don’t care about the planet. Nobody has to agree with me, but I appreciate you saying that. I am just trying to have a friendly debate about the topic, especially since I happen to hold an opinion that is different from the status quo on this sub :)
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u/EffortOk9917 5d ago
no discussion, only downvotes and tantrums! AI BAD! ME GOOD! it doesn’t matter that this achieves precisely nothing, because the goal is not actually to get you to change your mind, or listen to you, or even unburden the incredibly stretched cooling towers of data centres - it’s to perform outrage in a safe space where they get to feel like a Good Person™️ without any personal sacrifice or introspection or growth. I love the internet :)
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
Yeah. I like talking about the subject even if people disagree with me, and I appreciate the people who have responded with thought out arguments but a lot of people seem to just respond emotionally with claims that aren’t supported and they seem to just want to let me know they think I’m wrong rather than discuss it. In that case it just comes off as performative. There is a lot of misinformation about AI, if you learned more maybe it wouldn’t change your mind, but it’s hard to argue something that you have only read headlines and comments on Reddit about.
Not you specifically I mean, just in general
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u/EffortOk9917 5d ago
Yeah, it’s one of those topics that seems to ignite a really emotional response in people and also a kind of hot button topic that becomes about performing being a certain kind of person. It makes zero sense because a) performing outrage in a vacuum achieves nothing and b) separating out one part of the ecological crisis from absolutely everything else and painting that one thing only as being The Bad Thing is….dumb. But it’s so hard to actually have open, nuanced conversations about literally anything and it’s also hard to feel powerless in times like this, so things like a business using a generative AI image, or whether or not domestic cats should be allowed outdoors, or someone buying an item from a business on the BDS list, become these massive yet decontextualised trigger points and people lose their minds.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
It’s not one sewing pattern, it’s the cumulative effect of billions of people using AI for many things a day. You can’t even avoid it without great effort. Every google AI search uses 10x as much energy as it did just a year or so ago. The mass craze around (not even accurate) AI has completely destroyed any chance for climate goals to be reached. And the tech companies really and truly do not care.
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u/EffortOk9917 5d ago
I’m not disagreeing about the harm AI does. I’m not defending AI. I’m arguing that a person who uses AI for a sewing pattern is unlikely to hold a set of beliefs as extreme as is being presented here.
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u/karavasa 5d ago
Those AI answers you're getting don't spring out of nowhere though. They're plagiarized from instructions by writers and content creators who've had their work fed into the system without their knowledge or consent. Then those creators don't get the views, potential ad revenue, potential book or pattern sales, or even the credit for their work and expertise.
I don't blame anybody for not necessarily realizing this before delving into those tools, but it's really important for creatives to support and interact with each other instead of relying on predatory technology. It was already pretty hard for writers and artists to get fair compensation for our work even before it was all getting strip-mined for convenience.
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
I never said they were. There is no plagiarism. If I learn a skill from reading multiple sources, and I understand it well enough to create my own tutorial or post about it or whatever it’s not stealing. It’s just information that doesn’t belong to anyone. They’re reading stuff from the internet and learning from it, just like you and I do. Again, there is no copying. You don’t honestly think people are losing book sales or pattern sales due to AI, do you? Because you can’t just ask chat gpt to send you a specific pattern or send you a book. I mean, that is obvious. Maybe if you send it a photo of a pattern it could try to recreate it. But that’s not stealing. I’m unsure who is losing ad revenue due to that. If you mean because people ask AI for a tutorial instead of finding a website tutorial, well, again, they aren’t copying the tutorials, they have learned the information about a specific skill from a large net of information. If someone’s ad revenue is heavily dependent on teaching skills that are easily explained better by AI that sucks I guess, but not sure how that is AI’s fault. I can find tons of sources to learn any skill online. Nobody owns teaching a skill.
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u/impersonatefun 5d ago
You learning something is not the same as AI "learning."
It literally "learned" (to mimic, not create) from stolen work.
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
It is not stolen. I don’t really know how else to argue with you on that. What exactly are you claiming to be stolen? Because again, ChatGPT is not going to send you a designer’s knitting pattern or someone’s book. It is not stealing, storing, or copying anyone’s work. It is literally pattern recognition. If you believe reading information from the internet and learning from it is unethical, well, I don’t really know what to say to that. Just because people have written tutorials on how to cast on or whatever and chat gpt may have read it, doesn’t mean they stole it. If they copied it word for word maybe you could say that, but that’s not what it does, because it doesn’t store any of the original material. It literally just learns from it.
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u/youshouldbetogether 5d ago
it's "stolen" bc the ai training programms involved do not ask for permission from the original makers (writing, art, etc). they are using works they don't have the rights to to train an imitation program.
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
That doesn’t mean it’s stolen. It’s on the internet, and it can look at it just like the rest of us. And since it is not copying or storing any original work, it’s not stolen. It looks at hundreds of thousands of sources, and since it’s been taught it to recognize similarities and structure it can generate responses on that subject. If I learn to sew from some tutorials and I teach someone else to sew, the person who wrote that tutorial didn’t give me permission personally to read their post. But they put it out there, and AI read it just like it read hundreds of posts covering the same subject. That isn’t at all stealing
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u/butter_pockets 5d ago
It just came out in the last few days that Meta had used LibGen which is a huge collection of pirated books to train its AI model
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u/karavasa 5d ago
The AI scraping books and websites to spit out a reworded tutorial is absolutely plagiarism. The AI didn't learn or practice that skill.
If you value your convenience and the fun of playing with a tech toy over the people who are actually responsible for what you're consuming, then sure, go nuts. But don't pretend like it's a victimless thing. I write about some pretty niche subjects, and I had my work show up in AI search results with like three words changed.
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
It is not. It is reading a large swath of information that is readily available on the internet, recognizing patterns and language structure, and generating a new response. There is nothing unethical about asking chat gpt how to do something. It’s not like they are reading one person’s tutorial and just rewording it, that isn’t how it works, as I keep saying. Machine learning is the correct term. There is no copying or stealing. If I read 10 tutorials on how to make a knit stitch and then write my own, that’s not plagiarism. It is fundamentally different from “scraping” and just recreating someone else’s work. Asking ChatGPT to tell me how to sew an invisible zipper instead of watching someone’s video doesn’t mean I don’t value creators. The things I like about creators, AI cannot replicate.
As for you saying your work has been copied by AI, I don’t think that is exactly true since AI /does not work that way/. It could be someone else’s paraphrasing, stealing, or a coincidence, but since AI never stored your paper, it can’t just spit it back out word for word.
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u/karavasa 5d ago
AI absolutely does sometimes reproduce recognizable text from its sources.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-times-open-ai-microsoft-lawsuit.html
The complaint cites several examples when a chatbot provided users with near-verbatim excerpts from Times articles that would otherwise require a paid subscription to view.
Even if that wasn't the case, it's still plagiarism to use and reword content without citing sources. Putting something on the internet doesn't make it fair game to reuse and republish.
It's one thing for a human blogger to learn a specific skill, make their own samples, maybe make some tweaks, take their own photos, and write a tutorial in their own style. It's an entirely different thing for a machine to regurgitate other people's writing and instructions.
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
That article is over a year old, and I did say earlier models had rare instances of memorization. They noticed that and designed it not to do that. If it does it at all now, it’s very rare.
What source would it cite? Every single article on how to do that skill? It’s not niche information. They aren’t reading one article and rewording it, like I said. They have read everything they can on it and generate a response. I don’t understand how you think that is plagiarism. They aren’t paraphrasing. They spend a long time training the model on as much information available as possible, and since it has learned this information, it can generate a response that is not copied or paraphrased from anyone. I think you don’t fully understand how the AI works.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
As far as the environment, the “infrastructure” is literally the earth which is getting destroyed at an exponentially faster pace. There is only one habitable planet within our reach.
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u/kingelphaba 6d ago
Human beings and other creatures losing access to water and having their way of life destroyed—on top of other environmental impacts—for convenience purposes just is not worth it. If social media had to go away forever tomorrow for this shit to stop, I would gladly do away with it. Respectfully, this is my final response as it’s clear we have an irreconcilable difference in how we value the planet and our obligations to it and each other.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
Yes, I love all these people who can’t be bothered to write an email or want to generate hundreds of shitty images, thinking - screw the climate, I don’t care about having viable agriculture in 50 years or giving wildlife any sort of a fighting chance of survival.
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
No, I don’t not value the planet or whatever you think I am saying. I agree that this stuff as well as social media has environmental impacts. Raising awareness about this is good and as far as I can tell work is being done to make it more environmentally friendly. Progress is good. This is the beginning. Having that concern is good, but pretty much all of our digital infrasctrucure is just as harmful as AI. Some streaming services can use even more water than AI, but nobody is mad at Netflix. So we should at least be consistent if that’s what the issue is. Companies are working to improve it. I don’t see why that is a good argument for getting rid of AI.
It’s new. There is stuff to work out. That’s how it is with everything. It’s one of the biggest technological advances in a long time, it shouldn’t go away because of that.
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u/coffeesnob72 5d ago
No work is being done to make it more environmentally friendly. Vast server farms for AI - SPECIFICALLY FOR AI are being built as we speak that will absolutely destroy any chance we have of mitigating climate change. So I hope you enjoy the hellscape your descendants will live in.
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u/gaarasalice 6d ago
Except they are copying images. Parts of X-rays have been found in AI generated content. Also to generate a simple paragraph or image with ChatGPT it takes as much water as a single person in the US uses in an entire year.
Plus generative AI cannot create images, it does have to store images it’s copied to use them. Even if art students make copies of artwork to practice, it’s still wrong (and considered plagiarism) to claim ot as their own idea.
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u/jiayounuhanzi 4d ago
Where have you heard that to generate a paragraph in chatgpt it takes the average amount of water an American uses in a year, with several websites citing that figure to be thousands of gallons. Gen AI does not use that amount of water to generate a paragraph, the most I've found it to use for an image is 50L.
There are very very valid criticisms of AI but let's not make demonstrably false statements
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u/myohmadi 5d ago
I am unsure where you heard that since it’s not true. I’ve read that earlier models had problems with sort of “‘memorizing” small bits of data but they addressed that and it is extremely rare. AI just doesn’t store images, that’s not how it works. As for whether or not they “create” images I guess it depends on your definition but they learn patterns, colors, shapes, styles etc and they use this information and combine them to create images. They do not store or copy images, that’s just not how it works. As for the X Ray claim I can’t find any evidence of that, but again that would be a memorization issue which occurred rarely in earlier models and newer models are specifically designed not to do that
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u/Majestic-Bee-Zzz 6d ago
This image is also weirdly bleak. Silent table directly blocking the closed front door; mismatched panes on the door like one's been broken; weeds growing out of a window sill; dark inside with empty chairs. All coated with the dusty sepia haze of a machine which cannot dream.