Generative AI - Policy Discussion

1. It's not 'AI', no matter how people claim it is and I will continue to mock people that act as if that label is in any way legit
2. Procedural generation is still capable of being used for positive ends, but is deeply tainted by the unlawful reliance among most such tools on data gathered without valid consent
3. The distinction between generated art and human art is currently still significant when you discount the utter behemoths of Big Data that are currently emerging, but is likely to decline over time
4. Because of the highly dubious but still untested legality of its datasets and the increasing pressure it is placing on the value of traditional art and art education, it is preferable to regulate its usage here until such time as the true scale of its impacts emerge
5. Sexually explicit AI art should be thoroughly yeeted as there is literally no way to validate if models capable of such art is not constructed without the use of child pornography, a risk further magnified by the current proliferation of CP content and tools producing CP content across the scene right now (civitai is going to be screwed the moment US legislators look at it)
6. The power dynamic of procedural tools is spit between leaked and otherwise 'free' models and those that are fundamentally gated behind processing and power requirements that limit it to being the domain of vulture capitalism which is fundamentally opposed to the values and livelihoods of eagle time's members

For the above reasons, I condone the following uses of procedural generation;
1. Shitposting - The alien and black box nature of precedural tools leads to some wacky results and an immense capacity for rapid production of low-quality memes that do not fundamentally cause harm
2. Intermediary tool for non-commercial purposes - Rather than being the raw output, the use of procedural generation to come up with ideas and inspiration can be useful as part of a creative process but not its sum total. An example of this would be generating an image of a bird on a surfboard, copying that image, then replicating it by hand in a way that is sufficiently transformative; perhaps your version of the image is an eagle with large chest muscles and a police uniform, an Officer Big Pecks if you will. Artists steal from each other all the time and I have no qualms about artists stealing from AI to the capacity their existing skills allow where this does not place the livelihoods of fellow artists at risk.

I would specifically suggest prohibiting the use of procedural generation for the following
1. Grand Battles that do not specifically permit it
2. Forum Games where procedural generation may provide a sufficiently unfair competitive advantage (eg; a drawing contest)
3. Forum Adventures where the generative content is the total or majority of its content AND it is not a parody work in which the use of procedural generation is central to its humour (see; Shitposting exemption above)

I am unsure about the use of procedural generation for
1. Tertiary content for Forum Adventures, tagged within the thread title (I would 100% use it for this if I could devise a means for doing so that is not disrespectful or demeaning towards my artist friends)
2. Threads in the Projects forum (I think this can be fine but should be a topic of further discussion as to what projects and works we are ok with being housed here that use procedural generation)

You can spend hours figuring out how many times you have to seed "ultrahd 4k" into your image prompt before you get the desired result

An artist spends an inordinate volume of time and resources to learn how to produce art which vastly dwarfs that required for procedural generation. As much fun as I have with generative tools, I would never, ever want to even suggest that what I do is comparable to someone that's had to sit in classrooms and listen to lectures about this shit. If I did not compile the dataset myself and personally craft all the assorted LORAs and other components required for non-shitty outputs, I have no right to consider comparing my labour to that of a digital (let alone traditional) artist.

I was an amateur musician growing up and seeing visual artists also struggle through the pressure of not feeling 'good enough' is common to that experience. A child interested in artistic expression now has to compete not only with the pressure of being 'not good enough' compared to other artists, but also 'not good enough' compared to an automated process.