Dear Fediverse, thank you for being a safe haven from AI slop.

[andycarolan@social.lol]

@_elena Yes... how sick and disturbing is that?!

Every day I question why I'm giving this company money to use their apps. Sadly, I'm stuck with them as my work depends on it.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@andycarolan ouf I feel your pain.

When I had to make the Fedi promo video I absolutely had to use AfterEffects (there's no real competitor in the motion graphics sphere, plus I had over a hundred ready-made templates I could use to save time).

I only purchased an Adobe subscription for a month (AE). And canceled it as soon as the video was done.

For editing I learned DaVinci Resolve as I didn't want to give extra $ to Adobe.

It's so sad to see how far down they've fallen, values-wise 😭

[chuckthewriter@mstdn.social]

@_elena @bookstardust @lefteristrip23 You can trust my work and photos. No AI crapola from my cameras. All photos created with practical effects and technique, just the way they God and Saint Kodak and Mother Mary Nikon did declare.

[juergen@hello.jyrgi.de]

@_elena @andycarolan No need to feel guilty. It’s not AI as such that is evil, it’s what folks do with it or if they rely on AI w/o any doubt.
What you created is a great video with a good intend. Even if you used AI by intend it would not become a bad thing.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@juergen Oh no, you misunderstood our conversation Jürgen. AE = After Effects, aka Adobe's motion graphics app. I didn't mean AI.

After Effects requires painstaking manual work... I spent a month laboring on the animations for the Fedi promo video... 8 hours a day every day.

I would never ever ever use an AI gen tool in my work. As a creative, I abhor them.

I felt bad giving money to Adobe because the company took a bad turn, values-wise

@andycarolan

[_elena@mastodon.social]

#AIslop part 3: follow the money

Last night I did a reverse image search for that awful AI-generated illustration of NYC that I had seen on Pinterest... I couldn't find it anymore in my feed and I was curious to see where it was leading... what was the whole point behind it.

Well it lead to... a popular Etsy shop! Someone is creating city illustrations with generative AI and selling digital downloads of them. At 5 dollars a pop.

One of the reviewers wrote: "exactly what I was looking for!" 💀

[madduci@mastodon.social]

@_elena people buys trash. Even in bad economy times

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@sylvia @bookstardust @lefteristrip23 I went back to Pinterest this morning just out of curiosity since tuning my feed and... they're using gen AI for photos of clothes too now? What's the point?!?!!!!!!! Pinterest = truly dead to me

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@chuckthewriter @bookstardust @lefteristrip23 😄🙌🙌🙌🙌

[jan@social.dytrych.cloud]

@_elena LOL, are you kidding, right? Right? 🤪

[sturmsucht@mastodon.social]

@_elena

it's really barely usable anymore. Search for interior or cabins or gardens - it's a mess. Pinterest has become an AI slop spreader to other platforms like tumblr as well.

@sylvia @bookstardust @lefteristrip23

[jali@mastodon.world]

@_elena The only thing that's missing is that someone Tags AI Slop with an NFT and sells a link to an AI generated image to a crypto-trading-bot.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@jan I wish! The buyers have no clue it’s all AI generated 😭

[sylvia@social.lol]

@_elena @bookstardust @lefteristrip23 That is just ridiculous! Don’t they know they are killing Pinterest?

Etsy is getting worse too.

I was watching a video by a woman who bought sewing patterns on Etsy. It was ALL Ai.

She had a big problem noticing from the ad what was real and what was slop.

Now she intentionally bought obvious AI patterns because she wanted to show how bad they were, but others have no idea that patterns are all stolen and jumbled together in a mess.

The sad thing is that this kills creativity. This kills small businesses whose patterns were stolen by ai to manufacture slop.

When the bubble bursts, and it will because eventually investors will see it’s melting away their money, it will be brutal.

A new generation of creatives has already been ruined. A lot of small businesses in the creative field will have folded. A lot of writers will have drowned in a sea of ai slop flooding the markets.

It’s brutal. This is why having your own websites right now is so essential.

And yes, even with the knowledge that AI will steal all you put on there. I hope it chokes their machines.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@sturmsucht that’s so sad 😭 my heart goes out to creatives that relied on it for inspiration and/or exposure.

I wonder what people inside the company think about this devolution…

Disclaimer: I had (well have) a popular camera board on Pinterest (36k followers) and I was even invited by the company in 2017 to do a presentation at their London office. Those were the days…

Now I don’t dare add new pins to it in case they are AI slop 😩

@sylvia @bookstardust @lefteristrip23

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@jali 😂💀

[sturmsucht@mastodon.social]

@_elena

Oh, those innocent 2017 days..

@sylvia @bookstardust @lefteristrip23

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@sylvia it's so sad indeed. Initially I thought: if I worked at Pinterest, I would book an emergency company meeting to brainstorm ideas about how to deal with this... and the resulting exodus of real users.

Yes they did create a filter to turn off AI gen images (but only on desktop).

Thing is, when you report a pin, there is a long list of reasons... but not gen AI. I ultimately think they just don't care... they may see any content upload as a good thing 😭

@bookstardust @lefteristrip23

[sylvia@social.lol]

@_elena @bookstardust @lefteristrip23

I think you hit the nail on the head with that last line: any content is good content to them.

They show they really don't care just with omitting the gen ai option from the report function.

I really loved pinterest, it was a great anti anxiety thing for me to fill my boards, but I just don't care anymore. And even with the filter on, I suspect some images!

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@sylvia aw yes Sylvia, it was my happy place too and I'm so sad about what happened to it.

If I ever return to it, it will only be to browse existing pins I had saved. I'll bookmark my collections homepage now, so I can skip the main feed.

I don't trust the feed one bit and it makes me sad to see gen AI imagery in there 😭