I've seen a few posts that make some good points about AI editing stuff, but I also think that several of them miss the point of why people use genAI. (note, this isn't aimed at anyone in particular. It's more of like, a summary of my thoughts about AI in the simblr community, and the way people all over tumblr talk about AI.)
I'm firmly anti-ai (for theft reasons, for environmental reasons, for many, many reasons), and I fully believe in calling out and even shaming people who use it, BUT: Unfortunately it makes posts that look good! That post had like, 400-500 notes. The reason cutietrait was using ai was to make their posts look good so they could get notes.
I fully agree that genAI is a plague upon planet earth, but unfortunately, it actually does make cool-looking things. And that's why it's tempting to people who want the praise from Making Something Cool, without having to Put In The Work.
There's a reason people keep putting ai images on their character inspo boards, using it for character art (TTRPG community, I'm looking at you) or using it to texture cc. These people want to make things that look nice, and (as much as I wish it weren't true), AI can do that.
So part of it is not just educating people about the horrible costs of genAI (that is important, but unfortunately a lot of people don't care), but also changing the culture about creation. As someone said in a post yesterday: this is a community. You should be participating out of love for the community, not just for attention.
I don't fault anyone for wanting attention/validation, that's a natural part of the human experience. But you have to be willing to put in the work. So it's multi-pronged issue:
People want validation/attention (natural, okay)
People equate validation with self-worth / have generally unhealthy relationships with creation or social media (extremely and depressingly common, even among people who do make their own work)
Certain types of art/creation (e.g., detailed and realistic sims edits, certain styles of art) are valued more than others (also unfortunate but common)
People want that attention, but don't want to go through the effort of learning the skills that create those kinds of art.
Personally, the reason I want comments/reblogs/any kind of validation is because I spent hours of work on my creative work (writing, edits, etc.). But the problem is when people 1) have an unhealthy need or desire for attention, and 2) are using stolen work to get that attention.
So they turn to AI.
(Side note: it's tempting here to fall into logical fallacies like "it wasn't made by a human, therefore it has no soul". But that's 1) an argument that doesn't actually mean anything, and 2) not the point here. The point is that genAI uses work stolen from people who have dedicated hours and years of their lives to gaining specific skills. And those people are not being compensated in any way for their work.)
