YSK: db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com set up a AI image generator bot on the Threadiverse for anyone here to freely use
db0 set up an AI image generator bot both on the Threadverse and Mastodon some time back for anyone to use. All one needs to do is mention it in a comment followed by the text "draw for me" and then prompt text, and it'll respond with some generated images. For example:
@aihorde@lemmy.dbzer0.com draw for me An engraving of a skunk.
The bot has apparently been active for some time and it looks like few people were aware that it existed or used it --- I certainly wasn't!
I don't know whether it will work in this community, as this community says that it prohibits most bots from operating here. However, I set up a test thread over here on !test@sh.itjust.works to try it out, where it definitely does work; I was exploring some of how it functions there, and if you're looking for a test place to try it out, that should work!
It farms out the compute work to various people who are donating time on their GPUs via AI Horde.
The FAQ for the bot is here. For those familiar with local image generation, it supports a number of different models.
The default model is Flux, which is, I think, a good choice --- that takes English-like sentences describing a picture, and is pretty easy to use without a lot of time reading documentation.
A few notes:
The bot disallows NSFW image generation, and if it detects one, it'll impose a one-day tempban on its use to try to make it harder for people searching for loopholes to generate them.
There appears to me in my brief testing to be some kind of per-user rate limit. db0 says that he does have a rate limit on Mastodon, but wasn't sure whether he put one on Lemmy, so if you might only be able to generate so many images so quickly.
The way one chooses a model is to change the "style" by ending the prompt text with "style: stylename". Some of these styles entail use of a different model; among other things, it's got models specializing in furry images; there's a substantial furry fandom crowd here. There's a list of supported styles here with sample images.
db0 has encouraged people to use it in that test post and in another thread where we were discussing this, says have fun. I wanted to post here to give it some visibility, since I think that a lot of people, like me, have been unaware that has been available. Especially for people on phones or older computers, doing local AI image generation on GPUs really isn't an option, and this lets folks who do have GPUs share them with those folks.
I put this in the post body, but it was further in and I think that some people may not have read that far: this community, !YouShouldKnow@lemmy.world, says that it bans most bots, so I don't think that that bot will operate here. I linked to a test post on another community, !test@sh.itjust.works, where I know it works, because I just tested it there, if someone just wants to give it a try.
The reason many AI image generators do multiple images is as a simple way to trade compute cycles for quality. The idea is that you generate a couple and pick the best, using your human knowledge of what you intend.
You could generate it in one place, copy the URL of the best image, and embed it in your response. That's what I did when I pasted the links to the skunk engraving images in my post; the images were generated elsewhere. I just pasted all four rather than only one, to show what the response looks like.
The syntax for an inline image on the Threadiverse's Markdown variant is:

I assume that either that syntax or a similar one will work on Mastodon, but I don't know Mastodon's syntax, as I don't use it.
I actually think the bad one shot is kind of part of the joke.
For instance:
Someone posts a petty revenge story about getting back at their ex boyfriend for cleaning out their bank account.
I comment on that post with my request to aihorde along the lines of “a drag queen lifting a champagne glass as a toast to how delightfully petty someone is being”.
AIHorde will then generate the image.
Regardless of how good or bad the gen is, my original intent will come across because the OP can still see that my AIHorde prompt was intended to compliment OP. The bonus is if AIHorde comes up with an awesome output, it will be hilarious. It the output is terrible, also hilarious. If the output is so-so, the original intent of a compliment was still delivered.
At least, that’s my thinking.
As an example: Slack kind of had this functionality when sending GIFs awhile back. If you had the Giphy integration, you’d just type “/gif {topic}” and the integration would select a random gif that was returned from searching your topic. This GIF would be posted in the chat without you having the chance to review it first. Sometimes the GIF returned was irrelevant result, but everyone brushed it off because they knew how random the integration could be. Other times, it returned the perfect GIF and the potential randomness of result made a good GIF result even more satisfying.
Humbly requesting an explanation for the polarized takes on this. How are we so specifically split 50/50 rejoicing for the utility and cursing the 'slop' at the same? Someone sway me to a side? I'm addicted to reserving judgement
on the one hand, this is an ai horde-based bot. the ai horde is just a bunch of users who are letting you run models on their personal machines, which means this is not "big ai" and doesn't use up massive amounts of resources. it's basically the "best" way of running stable diffusion at small to medium scale.
on the other, this is still using "mainstream" models like flux, which has been trained on copyrighted works without consent and used shitloads of energy to train. unfortunately models trained on only freely available data just can't compete.
lemmy is majority anti-ai, but db0 is a big pro-local-ai hub. i don't think they're pro-big-ai. so what we're getting here is a clash between people who feel like any use of ai is immoral due to the inherent infringement and the energy cost, and people who feel like copyright is a broken system anyway and are trying to tackle the energy thing themselves.
it's a pretty thorny issue with both sides making valid points, and depending on your background you may very well hold all the viewpoints of both sides at the same time.
Both sides having valid points is almost always the case with issues of any complexity. I'm very curious to know why there isn't a sweeping trump card that ultimately deems one side as significantly more ethical than the other
Great analysis tho--very thankful for the excellent breakdown unless you used ai to do it or if that ai is ultimately not justifying the means adequately. No actually I'm thankful regardless but I'm still internally conflicted by the unknown