[revised and significantly expanded in June 2023 from the original written in Dec 2022/Feb 2023 to address some evolving situations. Also, while this is still pretty blunt, I think it is probably less hostile than the original, where I was on my defensive about people saying stuff like "you're dead to me if you use AI" or expressing sentiments that I'm "one of the elites" and should "go to jail", which 1. ACAB, 2. if you think I'm "one of the elites", first holy dogwhistle Batman [the only people I see throwing that term around are antisemites and QAn*n/other right-wing conspiracy dicks], second I am as far from "elite" as you can get, being multiply-marginalized, 3. I don't think I need to explain what happens to trans people in jail. I was understandably pissed off at the time, but in this version I try to get to the points here without calling anyone "whiny" and stuff.]
Let me start off by saying this: I do not, and will not, write fic with AI. I don't trust an AI to write fic for me, even with having a perpetual spoon shortage, especially because I write porn and the idea that an AI can write Tab A in Slot B without it being a fucking joke is just... no. I also take a certain amount of masochistic pleasure in the writing process, and wouldn't want to hand it off to AI [while art is different, see further below]. I don't blame anyone who's creeped out about AI fic, mostly. There are edge cases of people with learning disabilities or who speak English as a second language who are using ChatGPT to help them correct mistakes and I don't condemn the edge cases, which is not the same as "supporting AI fic".
I do, however, think that a full AI ban on AO3 of both fic and art is not going to work. Policy and Abuse is already dealing with a lot. They have their hands tied with actual abuse/harassment cases now - to wit, it took them six months to get back to me about a TERF harassment ticket I filed [note: I am not blaming them for this, but rather the structural failures in the OTW itself]. All an AI ban is going to accomplish is putting yet more workload on PAC that will take time away from abuse/harassment tickets, and if you don't think that bad actors will file false reports against people they don't like once a ban happens and innocent people won't get suspended - and if you think that it's easy to tell the difference between AI and non-AI - then there's a tropical beachfront property in Reykjavik I'd like to sell you.
I would not be entirely opposed to AI being added to the list of AO3's blanket warning tags [like Underage and Non-con], because I believe people have the right to curate their own fandom experience and avoid stuff they don't want to see. However, again, this is going to be very hard to enforce, and may result in people just not tagging it.
For the record, I do tag my AI-generated stuff on AO3 [whether in whole or in part] for this reason. I will comply with a ban if it happens [I already don't put my AI art on Squidgeworld because there is a "no AI" policy] and it's why I'm backing everything up here before the OTW Board turnover in October, but I think a ban is the wrong way to handle it.
If you're wondering why I even use AI for art at all, when there are so many ethical concerns about it, here's my defense:
1. I have Ehlers-Danlos, which primarily affects my joints. [I also have arthritis.] EDS varies in severity from person to person. In addition to frequent sprains/subluxations, I have difficulty with certain movements, like using a pen/pencil/paintbrush/stylus causes pain and I can't do it for very long. Photomanipulation helps me make art - it's much easier for me to twiddle a mouse around than it is for me to use a pen, brush or stylus. However, I run into limitations with this as well. Not all of my art involves AI, but yes, some of it does and this is why, and I try to be honest about what's what. I used to do traditional art before my EDS got this bad and I resent what my physical and mental illnesses have robbed from me over the years; I make art for my mental health. "Just give it up and go without, then, don't use AI" is a biiiiiiiiiiit ableist.
2. "It doesn't involve actual work and shouldn't be allowed!" Actually, you don't know how much time I spend on this stuff [more than you think] trying to finesse it; I get maybe one usable image for every 50-100 I generate and even then it usually involves [at minimum] needing to fix eyes/hands/etc. Meanwhile, how much effort goes into the 25- and 50-word fics, or one-sentence collections, that I see on AO3? [NO SHADE TO ANYONE WHO WRITES THESE, but I'm saying, if we're going by "actual work", something that took five minutes to write shouldn't be allowed either, so that argument is dead on arrival.]
2a. "It's low quality crap and shouldn't be allowed!" Uh. Have you SEEN some of the human-made fic and art on AO3? Have you. Have you really. [Not saying I'm a Pulitzer Prize winner, either.]
...Which segues back to how bad actors will get away with false reports and innocent people will get suspended, any not-polished-fic will be "AI" now whether it is or isn't.
And if it's too polished you'll still get accused of "AI". You can't win either way, so it's better to just not play the game at all.
3. I try to check my images to make sure that no outright plagiarism is happening.
4. I do not knowingly imitate the style of other artists [except occasional tributes to famous public-domain art like Van Gogh]. However, there is a difference between "plagiarism" and "in the style of", and in 2023 I feel like a lot of people have forgotten how this works.
Over the years, I have seen a lot of fantasy art [digital and traditional] and to be perfectly honest there are some professional fantasy artists whose styles are so similar that I wouldn't be able to tell them apart without labels. Is this plagiarism?
Guy Gavriel Kay was extremely influenced by JRR Tolkien. [He also helped edit the Silmarillion with Christopher Tolkien.] Is this plagiarism now?
Do you like the song "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars? Do you like anything by Pharrell or Jamiroquai? You can absolutely hear throwback influences. Do you like "Justify My Love" by Madonna? A lot of you don't know it samples a Public Enemy song. [Yes, for real.] Do you like The Weeknd? His voice sounds a lot like Michael Jackson's. Many rock bands were influenced by other bands that came before them. Elvis Presley was heavily influenced by blues legends. Is this plagiarism now?
"This has flowers and trees that vaguely resemble this other thing so it's plagiarism -" OK, so how many coffee shop AUs exist? How many Omegaverse AUs exist? How many gapfillers, fix-it fics, retellings of canon, etc, resemble each other on AO3, exactly? How many people try to imitate the literary style of Tolkien and fail? How many "Maglor's wife" OCs can dance on the head of a pin? How many "modern girl falls into Middle-Earth" stories are there? Is this plagiarism now? [again, no shade]
5. "It's being trained on art without permission" - I'm not saying this is great [so do not twist my words to mean "scraping is OK", that is not what I said]. However, every single one of us is a collection of influences and learning patterns that we may not consciously recognize. When I was a kid in school, our art teacher had us try to replicate Van Gogh paintings.
Where do we draw the line of "without permission", here?
With non-AI fanart, it still often involves likenesses of other actors, whether their characters or as faceclaims, whether with photoshop or digital painting or traditional art. These likenesses are being used without permission.
With fanfiction, you are borrowing another creator's characters, worldbuilding, etc, without permission. The Tolkien Estate explicitly says "no fanfiction" [thankfully, they don't have a habit of going after archives/individuals]. GRRM doesn't want you writing ASOIAF/GOT fanfiction and has publicly said so; Anne Rice has gotten upset enough over it that she's sued and cyberbullied fanfiction writers. I'll stop with those examples but there's more. Additionally, if you write RPF, you are shipping actors and [more often than not] writing them in sexually explicit scenarios without their consent.
Why is this OK and AI art isn't? Nobody has been able to give me a sufficient answer.
6. "It's putting artists out of work" - it is and it isn't.
I am not unsympathetic to artists who've had their work outright plagiarized, in the examples where it's happened, and I do not think that AI should be competing against humans for prizes/money and such, that's shitty.
However, there will always be a need and demand for human-made art. As things stand now, AI often messes up hands, eyes, and gives an odd number of limbs/limbs in weird places, and sometimes two heads. Even if this changes and AI stops making these kinds of errors, an AI did not paint the Sistine Chapel. An AI did not sculpt David. Humans will always feel the impulse to make beautiful things, and I don't see AI replacing the satisfaction that is making something by hand [and those who want to pay for something made by hand].
With regards to the "hurting artists' incomes" argument, a lot of us who use AI are poor folks who can't afford to commission artists ANYWAY [and if you're going to complain about a fanartist not getting theoretical commissions you're basically arguing that it's OK for fandom to be monetized which is its own can of worms].
Meanwhile, in terms of theoretical cost, I struggle with severe depression and anxiety from trauma. Sometimes, writing and art are two of the only things that keep me going. I'm not a professional, I'm just a hobbyist, but that's the thing. I shouldn't have to spend thousands of dollars on a little tiny thing that makes me happy in a world full of shit on fire? And I'm not alone in this. Are you really going to look me or someone else in the eye and tell me to stop when I go out of my way to try to use AI as an assist for art in the least shitty way I possibly can? Especially if you're just hunky-dory with shopping from Amazon, using Spotify, eating meat, driving a car, flying on planes, and all of that? How much do you consume under capitalism, friendo? What does your carbon footprint look like, exactly? How many kids work in sweatshops to make the clothes you wear and the products you use? Was your food picked by migrants who experience poor working conditions and racist abuse? Do you voluntarily live in a country that has drone bombed kids to "protect" your "freedom"? Need I go on?
Would you rather have "real", human-made art from Hitler, or would you rather do it yourself with a text-to-art machine and not have to worry that the person making art of your blorbo is a neonazi, a p*do, etc, and using your money to fund their "lifestyle" and you forever have their bad vibes shitting up something you paid for once they show their ass?
Which is part of the problem here. Right now, my observation has been that anti-AI hysteria is a way for people in fandom to use theoretical/fictional "artists put out of work" scenarios [it's not nearly as much as it's being spun] and cry "ethics" [when their own consumption/behavior is not the purest ever] to go after real people who are "acceptable targets" [marginalized people] where the attackers will get cancelled if they say their actual problem is that the person using AI [or falsely accused of using AI] is trans/queer, or BIPOC, or disabled/mentally ill/neurodivergent/etc, and the attacker/s are just using AI as an excuse to dogpile the marginalized fan/s. [A lot of people in fandom who claim to be progressive allies in public, are bigots behind closed doors. Ask me how I fucking know.] If you gave THAT MUCH of a shit about "ethics", really, you wouldn't be doing half the shit you're doing every day right now without even thinking about it, and you certainly wouldn't be dogpiling some marginalized person for making non-commercial art of their blorbos.
...It's very similar to the antis who are ~so concerned about tEh cHiLdReN~ that they send fucking death threats to people who write problematic ships/kinks. Actually, it's not a coincidence that a lot of people in fandom who are vocally anti-AI are also antis and engage in some pretty awful behavior, which is why I tend to just go ahead and pre-emptively block people who I know are very anti-AI-under-all-circumstances-no-exceptions.
7. If you read all of that and still say "AI has no place in fandom", you are entitled to your opinion - I'm not asking you to like AI, that's not the point of this essay - but I remember Strikethrough [I'm old], and this is the same kind of witch hunting censorship shit which is why places like AO3 were founded to begin with. It's one thing for a tiny [at present] site like Squidgeworld to have a blanket AI ban, which is fine. But with a huge megasite like AO3, you're asking for Strikethrough all over again, and that ban you're thirsty for might end up fucking you over if someone falsely accuses you of AI use post-ban. Think about it, k? Think about it real hard.
One last thing: here is a link to Glaze, a tool for artists of human-made art to protect your work if you feel it necessary.