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AI slop
I feel like these posts that just say "ai slop" ironically could just be... ai slop.
I think the fact that you cannot tell if I'm real already demonstrates why we shouldn't normalize posting AI-content unless it's clearly labelled.
But to put your mind at ease, could I maybe link you some furry porn to prove I'm real?
Could you!
OpenAI doesn't want you to know this
Are we seriously valuing this comic based on the quality of the drawings rather than the idea they convey?
IMHO this is all about the idea/text, which doesn't look like AI slop to me.
Yes.
Find a fitting meme template or create a new one. You don't need amazing photoshop skills. Or share your idea and let someone else do it.
Don't waste electricity and water, or legitimize generative AI to get your point across.
AI is distasteful to artists, disrespectful to our environment, and dangerous for the creativity of future generations.
People act like generating a meme is going to burn down the rain forest. That's like thinking you'll save the environment by taking one less shower each week. It's a drop in the ocean compared to what FANG and other corporations are doing at scale. Direct your hate towards them. Not the guy using *50Wh making an image.
*Number pulled from my ass but the point is that it's less than your last gaming session.
Let's look at a "worst case" on my PC. Let's say 3 attempts, 1 main step, 3 controlnet/postprocessing steps, so 64-ish seconds of generation at 300W above idle.
...That's 5 watt hours. You know, basically the same as using photoshop for a bit. Or gaming for 2 minutes on a laptop.
Datacenters are much more efficient because they batch the heck out of jobs. 60 seconds on a 700W H100 or MI300X is serving many, many generations in parallel.
Not trying to be critical or anything, I hate enshittified corpo AI, but that's more-or-less what generation looks like.
Thanks for taking the time to crunch the numbers. Good points!
At risk of getting more technical, some near-future combination of bitnet-like ternary models, less-autoregressive architectures, taking advantage of sparsity, and models not being so stupidly general-purpose will bring inference costs down dramatically. Like, a watt or two on your phone dramatically. AI energy cost is a meme perpetuated by Altman so people will give him money, kinda like a NFT scheme.
...In other words, it's really not that big a deal. Like, a drop in the bucket compared to global metal production or something.
The cost of training a model in the first place is more complex (and really wasteful at some 'money is no object' outfits like OpenAI or X), but also potentially very cheap. As examples, Deepseek and Flux were trained with very little electricity. So was Cerebras's example model.
I've heard some scary numbers when it comes to waste, but I don't have a source, nor do I intend to go digging for one because I'm already depressed enough. But you addressed neither of my other grievances. In the end I'd just prefer a future where work is automated, and not creativity nor thinking. I will speak up in this small space where I might be heard, when I believe corporations are betting on getting people hooked on AI because they've never learned to think or bothered to create for themselves, just so they can extract massive profits.
By all means, keep investing and being interested in specialized AI, AI research and AI ethics. But stay away from generative (text/image/video) AI.
I didn't address your other grievances because for the most part I agree with you.
I don't have a problem with AI when used by an artist/creator as a tool. Even better when using renewable energy. What irks me is blanket statements that demonize any and all use of AI. Or when people misrepresent themselves as a creator when all they did was enter a prompt.
I happened across a podcast episode that was about AI, that I was listening to with friends. I don't know if you want to take away anything from it but I figured I'd mention it here in case anyone wants to. Look for Serious Inquiries Only episode 477, "Debunking Bad AI Research, and Bad Coverage of AI Research". For you it might not be super interesting, since it's trying to explain the matter to those who might not already know much, debunking some bad studies, but towards the end they talk about the environmental impact. And this is with two experts, I believe.
One thing that pops up there is that training a "moderately large" model requires produces twice the CO₂ output of an average American over their entire lifetime. They mention water usage is really bad, too. And "moderately large" refers to what a University research team might be cooking up. Big companies have magnitudes more environmental impact from training their huge models.
(There is also a part 2, with the followup episode.)
That sounds worth a listen! Thanks!
Memes are worse than generated images in my opinion. Memes were the beginning of the end.
You're just reaffirming that AI bros don't understand art.
I might be misunderstanding, but how is using a meme template, art?
Memes are lame. Generative images isn't art. Both have been used in expressive ways in some cases, but generally it's still shit internet culture.
Apparently so.
Slop means shitty and disingenuous to me, which is not this comic. Frankly, it hits me hard.
I'm unmedicated. This was me yesterday, until my husband got me a red bull. Got the bare minimum done, with only one heart palpitation. So win? Hahahuhhuh
Def not slop. Def hit hard.
Yyep. That's a win.
The comic has basically been me for the last decade.
Laughs uncomfortably.
I swear, AI has put some people into some kind of looping thinking 24/7. Doesn't matter what the image is, if it's relatable or not, if it's made by a computer then it's bad. It could be an AI generated image containing complete, working instructions for making the cure for cancer, but it's bad because it's AI, because "AI is bad because AI is bad because AI is bad because AI is bad because-"
idk if this image is AI (i cannot tell), but AI image generators are, currently, unethical.
personally i don't have a problem with the idea of AI image generation, I have a problem with companies taking artists' images without them opting in to it, then attempting to "replace" artists with an algorithm that's trained on stolen work. I also have a problem with the technology's environmental impacts. i think this is a common sentiment.
edit: on further analysis, i'm around 70% sure this is AI-generated, due to the TVs looking the same while having a different art style, and due to the strange facial expression in the 2nd panel. also, in the 2nd panel, it would make more sense artistically for the character to be lying down while thinking that, showing that it can look the same on the outside.
I see nothing unethical about using AI, as long as you're not making something that will put an artist out of work. But memes are completely ethical. You're not going to hire an artist to create such a thing.
AI is created unethically, therefore choosing to use it while knowing how it is made and while knowing its environmental impacts is also unethical. You can choose to use AI, but you can't deny that its use is unethical.
Then how about instead of crying "slop" whenever you catch a whiff of AI, you instead start calling for the creation of ethical generators? Ones that are trained on ethically sourced training materials?
AI is never going away. That is a fact. It's too lucrative to just abandon. So rather than waste time and effort trying in vain to get rid of it, work to change it for the better.
I absolutely can deny that it's unethical. In fact, you could argue that using an LLM for memes is not only morally neutral, but actually morally positive.
First, environmental concerns. Is there any evidence that it takes more energy to quickly generate a meme image than to draw it on a computer? That seems highly unlikely. You would have to power a computer for hours to produce such a drawing by hand. It almost certainly takes a tiny fraction of the energy to generate an image via an LLM than it would to generate it via computer drawing software. And even hand-drawing doesn't escape this, as all the supplies you need also have high energy input requirements.
As to your other general ethics point, that's superstitious mumbo jumbo. You're arguing that an LLM is magically cursed because of how it was created. A tool can be created ethically or unethically, but something being created unethically doesn't magically make its use unethical. The only potential issue is that if you're funding the creation of the tool or giving the toolmaker money, you can provide a greater market for the creation of more unethical tools.
If anything, using the LLMs of the big AI companies to make memes is an absolute moral good. No one is going to pay OpenAI to make memes. Meme images cost the AI companies money to make but don't provide them any revenue at all.
Every meme image made by AI is a small blow against these companies. It costs them money but generates them no revenue. But because apparently AI is magically cursed with evil, any use of it must also be evil.
This is religious thinking, not rational thinking.
First, environmental concerns. Is there any evidence that it takes more energy to quickly generate a meme image than to draw it on a computer? That seems highly unlikely. You would have to power a computer for hours to produce such a drawing by hand.
It doesn't take hours to draw a meme image. Spending a few minutes using a meme template or drawing a quick meme will most certainly not use more energy than AI.
[...] but something being created unethically doesn’t magically make its use unethical.
Sounds like a philosophy problem to me. In my opinion, the use of something created unethically being unethical is a truth that we must accept, even if it's hard to do so.
This is religious thinking, not rational thinking.
No, we just think differently.
Every meme image made by AI is a small blow against these companies. It costs them money but generates them no revenue. But because apparently AI is magically cursed with evil, any use of it must also be evil.
If nobody used AI image generation, these companies would not even exist, it would be the ultimate blow. So, logically, more people using their AI helps these companies long-term.
It's politicized.
It even works in hindsight. I pointed out some cherished fan remaster of a TV show made years ago was machine learning processed, which apparently everyone forgot. I got banned from the fandom subreddit for the no AI rule.
The ironic thing is this works in corpo AI slop's favor, as anti-AI sentiment hurt locally runnable, open weight models and earnest efforts more than anything.
containing complete, working instructions for making the cure for cancer
Did it contain it once? Or did it ever contained exclusively mindless slop mangled together from bits of stolen art, carefuly put together to be simultaneously as unsettling, as unappealing, and as insultingly bland as possible?
You out there defending shrimp Jesuses as if there is any merit in copypasting it ever. You had to invent a scenario that never happened and can't possibly happen, to paint us as unreasonable, meanwhile all that "your side" produces is exclusively derivative slop that costs precious resources to make while removing value from the world.
It's not that we hate on perfectly good images because it's made by computer, we hate on offensively terrible images flooding our world. The fact that you can shortcut it to just hating generators is our point actually
how do you tell?
The two sides are drawn at a completely different scale and the person on the left is missing an arm. Some funkiness with the line weight. Just has that AI vibe to it.
The off-white color used rather than plain white, the inconsistency between panels (look at the size difference of the people compared to their couches and the way the TVs are drawn), no artist's signature, and the lines being thick and uniform were all indicators that jumped out at me.
Looking at it closer, the way the woman's legs are connected to her body is really weird. Don't think I've ever seen a person drawn that way.
Also looks like they've posted about 24 comics just this week: https://ww.twstalker.com/ADHD_weirdo_
(Unless maybe they're reposts?)
Very sloppy indeed. I'd much rather look at hand-painted ms-paint than this right-winger-abused gen style.
Rage comic-style > gen slop.