The guy replying to me is (as far as I can tell) the sole owner and moderator of .wtf, which is the instance I’ve been using up until this point. I kinda already knew they allowed AI slop, as there’s nothing in the rules that says otherwise, but this interaction really sealed my decision. “Hey, person who makes music. If you don’t like another musician using the fascist plagiarism machine, how about you offer to create art for them? After all, if people simply donated their time and effort, maybe they wouldn’t have to resort to pissing in the face of their fellow artists of a different medium. Think about it.”
Also, I think you can donate to the instance in crypto?
Fuck right off with that.
On another note: PeerTube itself uses Whisper for automatic subtitle generation. It’s something I don’t LIKE, but I approached the devs about it and they responded very thoughtfully. I’ll admit I don’t know all the differences between locally run, open source models that are used for accessibility and the horrible plagiarism machines we all despise the most. I suspect they’re still built off exploitive tech / trained on stolen data and whatnot, and Whisper being the product of OpenAI doesn’t inspire confidence, but Framasoft only uses it to detect speech, not create it. That’s hardly “generative” at all, is it? It’s just creating subtitles. Now, that doesn’t mean the program itself is ethical given how it was likely created (as the devs acknowledge), and we SHOULD push for ethical, FLOSS methods of doing these sorts of things. I’m sure it can be done, it wasn’t exploitative before the AI boom, right? This is where my knowledge ends and I ask for feedback. Any thoughts?
“you are more than welcome to offer your cover art services for free.”
The gross entitlement to other people’s labor just seems to come so easily to some people… It shows just how much of generative AI is based on little more than the desire to exploit people’s work.
I don’t think that properly summarizes the interaction. It’s more like
OP: I do not consent to my work being used here.
Meldrik: Have you considered consenting?
one of my coworkers uses AI to generate his music from the lyrics he writes
it’s shit, i fucking hate it. it’s like auto tune but so much worse. I told him I’d give it a listen if he’s actually performing something and auto tuned it… hasn’t happened
My friend did the same thing and didn’t get why I wouldn’t tolerate it, even tho he wrote the lyrics. Also, this is coming from someone who LOVES pitch correction as an effect. I adore synth pop and digitally perfected vocals as a choice.
for sure! it can be garbage when overdosed but auto tune isn’t without its uses.
My best friend is a musician and he’s toyed with various “AI” tools. Given how hard it was for us to find a drummer when he and I were in a band, I can get why someone might use these and add a drum part to workshop a song or whatever. But making whole “songs?” He and I have reached a sort of ideological impasse on this subject lol
Do people have no shame anymore? That’s downright bury your head in the sand shameful and cringe.
If you’re already making music how hard is it to make a fucking album cover??? Kids these days are lazy as fuck. I was making shitty album covers in gimp when i was 6, and I’m not intelligent.
I blame parents.
That’s funny because I leave songs unreleased for the single fact that I can’t commission art for all of them, and I have no skills personally, so I DO find it harder to make cover art then music! But you know what I still do? Get an actual artist to make something for me! At some point!
Oh and I get that, I probably came off jerkish saying that people can just do it themselves but yes there’s always the option for collaboration. Thats the worst thing about llm slop, it further pushes us to a hyper individualistic capitalist hell.
Honestly, your comment is mean spirited and unnecessary. Not everyone share the same amount disdain you have against AI, and that includes !fuck_ai@lemmy.world.
I don’t appreciate AI slop album cover, yes. I also won’t go around like this and make people feel bad unsolicited.
Idk if I’d call it mean spirited, but it sure was meant to be rude, yeah. Why should I respect someone who so blatantly disrespects me and my creative peers, and in such an obviously hypocritical way? I would never incite harassment against anyone, but I have no tolerance left for people who do anything less then shun this stuff. We’ve all had years to understand the harms “generative” AI causes, yet some people who run decentralized instances, heck, even those who create open source tools, continue to either turn a blind eye or be outright accepting of this shit.
I don’t think it’s productive to bash people either, but if I get a response as ignorant as the one I got from Meldrik, in 2026, it isn’t my responsibility to be civil to someone who clearly does not care. At that point, all I can really muster is, “Wow. You’re a dick.” because anything else is a waste of my time.
Unsolicited advice from someone who used to be like you: Consider a person’s intent when considering your tone. You can’t just make a call regarding your outward level of courtesy merely based on subject matter. They may not know better. In a vacuum, is it “fair” to hate someone based on unintentional ignorance? Consider their intent first.
Edit: to be clear I’m referring to the unintentional ignorance of the artist, not meldrik. Fuck that guy.
I find it pretty hypocritical for a musician to think that using AI for their album cover is somehow okay. Regardless of the medium, AI relies on the theft of human creativity, and I’m surprised that “Billy” doesn’t take that more seriously.
Of course, I’m assuming that the music itself isn’t AI slop, which it very well may be.
Yuuuup! And I ain’t sticking around long enough to find out!
I’ll admit I don’t know all the differences between locally run, open source models that are used for accessibility and the horrible plagiarism machines we all despise the most
Fwiw 99.9% of the time someone talks about ak “open source” generative AI model, what they really mean is “open weight”.
An open-source model has public training code and training dataset, allowing full reproduction
— a random Reddit post I found when looking for a good definition to share
Some people (including the author of that definition) don’t like the need for open source models to have an open source dataset. It’s also not clear to me whether that definition is even supposed to mean the dataset is actually public domain, or just clearly defined (e.g. “we trained on all top 100 best-selling books from the period 2000–2020”). The former would obviously be very meaningfully different from closed models in terms of accusations of ethical problems in the training process.
Open-weight models basically just mean you can download it and make some slight tweaks and run it at home. It means the big AI companies aren’t benefiting financially from your use and can’t train on what you feed them for their next model, and because these are typically designed to be run locally rather than in a data centre the environmental impacts are lessened. But in terms of the training process it’s no better than closed models.
So this is what Whisper and whatnot is like? Framasoft responded tastefully to me and I understand their perspective, but now I’m realizing that Kdenlive has some similar, and potentially generative features and I’m trying to get testimony from the devs of that project because istfg if their using fucking generative AI just as I was getting used to and learning my way around their video editor, I’m going to lose it.
Please update on that when they respond. I’m in the same boat where I am learning to use Kdenlive and man… I really don’t want to find out they are contributing to the ecological damage associated with GenAI.
I will. https://bark.lgbt/@cloudskater/116179184695668448
Also, I reached out to OpenShot because there really aren’t that many good open source video editors and I wanted to try them on for size, and I got a self proclaimed bot reply to my email… that claimed the software made no use of generative AI. Now, to be fair, idk if it was a generated reply or a pre-written human one that was sent to me based off some of the words in my message or something, but the irony is hilarious.
Also also, if you don’t have AI, why not state it on your website? I don’t get why FLOSS projects will say “yeah we don’t use AI” when asked, but won’t state it right up front. It should be a point of pride, it’s one of the reasons I come to you over closed source options! The very nature of open source goes against that slop, omfg have a backbone!
THANK YOU! Yes, it should be broadcasted with pride! Hell, even proprietary software should be using it as a selling point if their company and offerings are 100% AI free. People don’t want computers to be the touchpoint of the companies they’re giving money to.
I’m a senior web app developer by profession, and AI literally took my job last year in April. I’m unable to get a job to this day. Over 80% of the jobs I get notifications for want people like me to either use AI tools in my workflow, and/or the company is peddling their AI powered horseshit as the penultimate business decision their target audience will die without.
I am pivoting to making a living building open source, AI free software at this point. I can’t look myself in the eye if I support the broligarchy that’s killing the environment.
I got a response! https://bark.lgbt/@cloudskater/116179184695668448
Hmmm… well, since I won’t seek out the external tooling for their local AI stuff, I suppose I can keep going… still feels kinda icky lol
Yeah I… Okay let’s take automatic subtitle creation for instance. That existed well before the LLM bs and was fine. Plus, the stuff they’re calling AI isn’t pretending to “create” anything, it’s just automating some repetitive tasks or using pattern recognition to move an effect across the frame. If we were to continue to criticize them (which would be fair), I would say that they should not even entertain software made by companies like OpenAI, even if they were fully transparent. However, I don’t think it’s on the same level as including or supporting anything that claims to be generative.
I won’t be installing the AI stuff either, just to be safe, but my issues with the things they replied to me with are the sources of the code they’re using and it’s potential to be exploitative, not the actual uses of the software. Does that make sense?
What kind of software are you making? I mostly make music and videos and stuff so I have no clue if it applies to me but please put it on my radar.
Also can I marry you?
Sorry, you’re 11 years too late for that one :)
I’m currently building an ethical alternative to Substack (they have a nazi problem on their platform). It’s going to be a Fediverse app. No idea when I’ll launch that, but I’m determined to get it launched sooner than later.
Otherwise, I’m a gun for hire on building custom web based software for any business that needs my services.
Fuck yeah that’s awesome! Wishing you the best of luck and no off-by-one errors haha
