Comment by Mii@awful.systems on Elon Musk releases Grok-2 AI image generator for edgelords

think I forgot this one

I’m still waiting for even one argument for the usefulness of AI image generation that isn’t fucked up. Just one.

Grok seems so support nudity and deepfakes too according to some news articles I’ve seen because of course nothing screams more free speech than plastering the face of your favorite actor or political opponent into a porn scene, so now let’s see how long it takes the first bluecheck fucker to try and create CSAM with it, because I suppose that’ll be the point when it gets too hot even for Elon.

It’s pretty great for DnD. A lot of people have trouble imagining things in full detail from a text or spoken description, so being able to generate images of the scene, characters, objects etc is super fun and adds a lot of richness to the experience.

This is the best use I’ve found for it as well. Especially if I want to quickly create a unique token for an NPC.

Generally speaking I’ll commission actual artists for pictures of PCs, but for a named NPC sorcerer who’s just going to be in a handful of scenes? AI has been great.

I haven’t played DnD in decades, so I’m unfamiliar with the scene nowadays. How are these visuals presented for the players? Does everyone have a screen? Or this more for an online scenario?

In my specific case this is for a group that plays online. We use a virtual tabletop called FoundryVTT.

I play every week in person with a group of friends. But rather than playing with paper and pens and tabletop maps or whatever we use roll20 a free online DnD platform. It lets everyone see the map, characters, character sheets, notes, logs etc on a laptop or tablet. It’s a bit clunky at times, but generally speaking its great.

How would a random person on the Internet, with no previous experience or friends that play, join an online d&d game?

Roll20 actually has a list of public games on their platform looking for players. You could check out there.

Yeah absolutely. Of course the work of an actual artist will be better in almost every case. AI lacks consistency, it doesn’t always followed the prompt properly, it’s easily confused, geometry and anatomy are sometimes fucked up. But for a group of dirt poor students who just want to have a fun game to play on the weekends AI is good enough.

It’s also good for concepting an idea before commissioning a real artist.

as someone who only draws as a hobbyist, but who has taken commissions before, i think it would be very annoying to have a prospective client go “okay so here’s what i want you to draw” and then send over ai-generated stuff. if only because i know said client is setting their expectations for the hyper-processed, over-tuned look of the machine instead of what i actually draw

Would you rather have a dozen back and forth interactions?

Besides, this is something I’ve heard from other artists, so it’s very much a matter opinion.

The main opposition to ai images by artists is that it steals art from artists to make plagiarized versions, thereby taking away from paid work from those artists. If in the end, an artist is still being paid, what’s the difference between a commissioner handing a pile of reference sheets? Annoying, sure, but not immoral.

Would you rather have a dozen back and forth interactions?

these aren’t the only two possibilities. i’ve had some interactions where i got handed one ref sheet and a sentence description and the recipient was happy with the first sketch. i’ve had some where i got several pieces of references from different artists alongside paragraphs of descriptions, and there were still several dozen attempts. tossing in ai art just increases the volume, not the quality, of the interaction

Besides, this is something I’ve heard from other artists, so it’s very much a matter opinion.

i have interacted with hundreds of artists, and i have yet to meet an artist that does not, to at least some degree, have some kind of negative opinion on ai art, except those for whom image-generation models were their primary (or more commonly, only) tool for making art. so if there is such a group of artists that would be happy to be presented with ai art and asked to “make it like this”, i have yet to find them

Annoying, sure, but not immoral.

annoying me is immoral actually

You trust modern reddit posts?

it’s like you’re trying to convince me to bully you

Creativity is subjective. I’m talking about people who have trouble putting their ideas to words when working with an artist on a commission, not people who want an llm to do “their” rough draft.

I’m banking on the primary use case being “getting Elon sued into oblivion by Disney” .

…I mean yeah that’s a pretty obvious use case - if Elon’s given you a checkmark against your will, might as well use the benefits to cause him as much grief as possible.

(Also, loved your series on Devs - any idea when the final part’s gonna release? Seems its gotten hit with some major delays.)

Oh no, the dangers of having people read your work!

It is coming, potentially in the next week. I was on leave for a couple of weeks and since back I’ve been finishing up a paper with my colleague on Neoreaction and ideological alignment between disparate groups. We should be submitting to the journal very soon so then I can get back to finishing off this series.

oooh, please link in c/sneerclub when you can

Works great for generating mod assets, in my case making PBR textures for RTX remix. It’s a very niche use case though. It’s great though because I get high quality assets without relying on existing mods to do the same.

Integration with graphical design software for inpainting, outpainting, upscaling, etc.

It’s great for making images to associate with language learning flashcards.

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here’s the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

Elon Musk releases Grok-2 AI image generator for edgelords(pivot-to-ai.com)

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