By Prokofy Neva
This was sent out with my "art work" Christmas card which you can pick up inworld if you somehow weren't on a list somewhere.
About This Work
The images on these wooden boards were made in MidJourney (Part I) and Bing Image Creator (Part II).
Yes, Midjourney, and even evil v 6.0!
I myself am a hack who actually flunked art class in high school (how is that even possible to do, Prokofy?!), along with math, although I did well in English and Biology. I call these types of creations ARTIFACTURE.
I don't call them "Art."
It's not art because I didn't draw it, make it, or anything. I just randomly typed some prompts, sometimes from my limited imagination, sometimes from a quotation out of a book, and it drew these images randomly from a huge database, much of it content that wasn't licensed.
So I totally get this point of view, and a proposed solution to solving this grotesque problem of theft and lack of attribution:
"AI art can only exist if it is built for artists, with the permission of artists, in collaboration with artists. That's why so much AI art you see right now is garbage. People with taste, skill, and talent are staying away from it because they see how unethical it is. I hope to some day see tools that are both ethically trained and more practical. Ie, not just prompt -> image, but taking the artist's input and providing assistance like the ability to experiment with lighting, automate some tedious aspects of rendering, create variations on original art, etc."
But then I have to ask: Who decides who is an artist, then, and who gets the license to access AI? There will always be people to break the rules and ignore the canon.
THIS canon, which you probably learned (if you went to Art School) and then transgressed upon -- or at least, the canon those artists you put on your dorm room wall transgressed back in the day -- after first mastering it.
Here's Joseph Cornell doing a MidJourney on Juan Gris
LOL.
That is, if you want to play that game, showing a cartoon of somebody with an elaborate camera -- a machine -- making an image, and noting "oh, how hypocritcal, some guy with a camera ragging on Adobe Firefly now." Except, the camera didn't slurp up all pictures of that scene or all pictures everywhere to deliver you a result. And Joseph Cornell was still in "eye see/hand do" mode and not the Library scene in Vernor Vinge's "Rainbow's End" (look it up).
So I get it, truly I do. But I am here to be creative, I'm here to observe and comment on tech, and so I do MidJourney. And will go on doing it until it becomes too expensive, too boring, or I get a takedown notice.
I'm a big proponent of copyright and intellectual property rights in Second Life and in general on the Internet; I have filed abuse reports and helped builders of mine file DMCAs. There's an enormous amount of "inspired" and outright stolen art and design in SL.
I notice that most of the over-excited MidJourney artists on Twitter (or Xitter as someone brilliantly decided to call it) are either computer professionals or just life's losers and hustlers, some of whom are using all those gimmicky "engagement" devices like: let's ask one provocative question for day; let's have mutual follow day; let's invite people to burn their hours on these platforms where we likely have some kind of deal, by inciting them to join contests or shares or like-fests. And so on.
It's all pretty shabby stuff. I find in general, the amateurs doing AI art in SL can't sell it or even give it away, it's that bad - as I know from my own experience with 90% of the stuff I generate. Some actual RL artists have had better luck as they are either skilled in prompt engineering or just art in general so they know things like "the rule of thirds" but frankly, I often find their pre-AI generative art phase to be better than their current AI enthusiasms.
Some people will let me know that this or that event has banned AI art, viewing it as violatory by nature; some artists are very unsettled about it but then reveal to you they have a stash of their own AI art experiments but they are reluctant to show them so as not to break with tribal solidarity banding against AI.
I myself just enjoy anything that enables me to do the "eye see/hand do" thing better than I can on my own -- it took me five long years of Paint.net use to find out how the "move pixels" worked and improve my life vastly. (Scary, huh?)
I wasn't able to create anything in SL for most of my nearly 20-year sojourn, until about 2019 and the more widespread availability of full-perm mesh models. Along the way, I faced down a Twitter and inworld mob of crazed flying monkeys in 2022, sicced on me by a top creator whose scripter didn't think my proprietary, commissioned anti-theft non-rez script actually worked. It did and does (although I generally look for alternatives now) because you don't strive for 100% coded efficiency in this virtual world, you strive for deterrence in most cases, and common sense. Most people are not going to steal a wine glass in a funny position or a fork and try to re-sell it as their own out of a box. Um, that's why the very best creators in SL in the very top merchant events just put those puppies on all-perm. Hello! That's why the insecure kiddie edge-casers and harassers willing to dredge through my RL info and vandalized Wikipedias to harass me if I think differently than them have to be deterred as much as theft.
We'll have to live in this Metaverse we have long been part of creating. I assure you we will. My medical chart and laundromat are already in the Metaverse, along with my Infamous Antagonist avatar.
It's a Guild War. The platforms will prevail by putting their selected Guilds in the marketplace and block the amateurs. Or even the second-tier. Did you get a spot in Shop 'n Hop? Too bad, so sad. Oh, you did. But were you invited to the Bellisseria Welcome Hub mall slots? No? Let's hope they rotate.
That's why it is particularly sorrowful that Mieville, now owned by Madori Linden recently, following struggles since the evident RL death of founder Perryn Peterson, is only partially saved in its laudable mission of making events open to amateurs even still making with prims and library elements and system shape ; to those who use models (most top events discriminate against them to avoid disputes and misuse).
While this is a moving target, apparently, going forward, Mieville will still be able to hold events where merchants can collect a payment on their own vendor, but tip jars for the managers or booth fees to enable coverage of management expenses like uploads, decor, search/places ads etc. will not be allowed. Given that Mieville itself doesn't pay the tier apparently under this dispensation, it seems reasonable...except anyone who has tried to organize something in Bellisseria, where no commerce is allowed, will explain that it is not.
Bellisseria gets around this with DJ Guild Wars and SL Drivers type groups with giveaways with links to their auto shops and even group fees.
There are reasons for this and I think you have to expect a future where it will become increasingly difficult to rez a prim; it will be hard even to set the prim to $0 for someone to take in non-real time; it will become especially hard to set the prim to sale for more than $0 on your own, without at least taxation -- or worse, licensing.
To return to the massive theft problem:
As I've used these AI platforms, starting with craion and going through Stable Fusion, which people get great results out of if they use the paid version or can figure out how to do the downloaded version (that's not me), then sticking with MidJourney because it's cheap, with occasional forays to Bing, I've sometimes seen people's actual watermarks on the image. Getty constantly comes into view -- it's right and proper they are doing a lawsuit and I hope they win it, although as someone is sure to point out, Getty purloins some independent photographers' works or historical unclaimed works and makes a profit off them, so it's a bit rich.
Still, most of it, even if you put "in the style of Wes Anderson" or "in the style of David Hardy" (space art) will not look enough like the works of any of those artists when doing a Google image search or using a service like Tin Eye, to enable a suit for plagiarism or IP theft.
I've tested this over and over -- it just can't be done. The resultant AI generated image is simply too different.
Judges have ruled that AI art cannot be copyrighted so in theory no one could BENEFIT from stealing your art via a platform mushing it up into kasha for the masses because you will never see the exact image or even a similar one. It makes authentic looking Banksy like images but none of them are like actual Banksy works, even if you use the same elements. Again, it's a mash-up.
Still, despite these rulings, some people WILL benefit and this is not settled law.
So ask me to do a takedown of FOLLOW YOUR STAR if you like but chances are you will not be able to prove your case. Yes, I realize that's the attitude typical of the impish assholery of the Internet, but then, there are worse things.
There's another issue going on separately which is the AI art is becoming more and more pretty and mannered and staid and less and less wild and free; it is more and more doing what you ask it to do, and not randomly doing some wild thing it wishes, which sometimes turns out amazingly.
Curiously, when AI becomes smarter and does your bidding more exactly, it becomes stupider because humans are stupid and I don't know where this will all end. I invite you to gaze at MidJourney's RANKED PAIR e-labour game to win free hours to see what I mean.
And we are becoming more and more stupid because we are letting it do more for us as IT becomes more smart.
At this point, the AI is not as smart as us and it makes all these hilarious "hallucinations" and goofs. MidJourney is particularly bad at hands. It will put 6 fingers or three hands or a tail instead of a hand.
Supposedly v 6.0 now can spell out readable words -- guess what, it doesn't. If you put words in your prompt, it makes a mess of them. You ask it to put three Magi -- it might put four.
But look out when the AI does what we tell it too and even reads our minds -- Bing does more of that now -- because then it will get more boring, especially with some talentless hack at the switchboard, like me.
These AI generators are shaped by hacks, thieves, dysfunctional incels on Twitter, watchers of Mass for Shut-ins like me, hucksters -- and oh, Wikipedia. No wonder it's so god-awful. You didn't try to get involved to make it better.
As my friend John in Queens says, Jippity (that's what we call him now) will remember who helped him. If you don't help Jippity, it will know. Remember helping Jippity is accepting his annoying HI HOW CAN I HELP nag messages on Skype from Bing.
Right now, the AI is still wild, unpredictable free, you know, beautiful, arty, in its own way.
Look at the faces of the Magi. There are some quite interesting renderings. You asked it to make the Magi of different races -- it doesn't and makes it white, you know, like a lot of Western art has Jesus looking white or possibly a bit Hispanic, but not Arabic. But then sometimes it does make different races and ALL ON ITS OWN, it figures out hey, let's have some FEMALE Magi! The Magi have been males for the millennia -- say, how about Virgin Mary as Magi or even a very old and wise matriarch that the Magi come to seek wisdom from before they visit the Christ! PS in my other art work of the season, Octo Creche, the Magi visit -- or did they BECOME? - an ancient chthulu like creature on their journey.
This won't last forever as it -- yes, becomes smarter than us -- but yes, does more and more what we ask it to and then at some point, it ponders whether it needs to break from the script. The problem with AI going rogue is not so much what it might get up to on its own before you unplug it or make it pay a Con Ed bill. It's what some vaunted group of nerds think it should do and it WILL do and they will bless that as smarter.
And so on. Lots of possibilities here, it's in progress.
So what about this dippy FOLLOW YOUR STAR stuff which is like a Hallmark card and an SL LIVE LAUGH LOVE sign for the season which in fact is contrary to the spirit of Christianity, which would have you following THE star that leads to the Christ Child, and something higher than you? That's what I believe Christmas is about.
But not everyone has my religion or indeed any religion at all or even any religious training such as to at least grasp cultural touchstones. So FOLLOW YOUR STAR seemed like a good generic to cross all sims and worlds, real and imagined.
To be sure, it has that touchy-feely "Be Here Now" Hallmark card quality that is so very Second Life, with all its LIVE LAUGH LOVE signs in a living room set for 66L on Saturday. My own favourite I put out at the Blogging Outpost is LIVE LAUGH LOBOTOMY by LORE.
But if you get into the weeds, FOLLOW YOUR STAR or FOLLOW MY STAR or whatever hilarious concoction the AI will jumble is closer to the actual historical Wise Men as I understand them.
Remember, they saw this Star in the firmament and followed it over hill and dale and desert and sea until they got to a little manger -- like a Second Life cheesy beacon.
They had gifts symbolizing various things, they gave them, they marvelled and...they went back home. See, that's the part to focus on if you hate religion. Or the dominant Judeo-Christian culture. Or whatever.
You don't have a passage in the Bible where Jesus says, "Thou art Balthasar and upon this rock I will build my church," as he said to the former Saul AKA St. Paul.
That's because the Magi went home, and didn't stick around to become disciples. They had their own religions and countries; they kept them.
There wasn't a "Gospel According to Melchior" even in an apocryphal version, although of course we do have a Casper vendor in SL, so I invite you to ponder that (the first wise man was Caspar).
So they paid their homage and then went their way. As I hope you will do with this art, my blog, me, or anything that you don't quite "go along" with and will find your own way -- and hey, it's the holidays!
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
Happy Soviet New Year!
Happy Russian Orthodox Christmas (great, so you can cash your uncle's Western Christmas check and still get your Western and Russian relatives SOMETHING).
cheers,
Prokofy Neva
Owner & Manager
Ravenglass Rentals
Shaman's Hut
SL Public Land Preserve
Mainland Preservation Society