cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40825996

Digital artists and illustrators are abandoning Elon Musk’s blogging platform X (formerly Twitter) over the introduction of a new controversial image-editing feature powered by artificial intelligence (AI). According to reports, the creators claimed that the new tool could be used to modify others’ works without their consent.

One such popular creator championing the boycott is Mu-jik Park, the renowned South Korean artist known by the pen name Boichi. Boichi is the creator of the hit manga series Dr Stone and Sun-Ken Rock.

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[–] 47 points 10 months ago

Only now? Not after hearing the platform was run by a Nazi? Only after your money maker is threatnd? Fuck off, just as greedy as the CEO's..

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago

    First they came for the...

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago*

    This is more leopards eating faces because the platform is absolutely there to provide data for the xAi platform.

    Ever since that was announced it was known that x posts were going to be fed into ai training.

    The artists posted content to an AI training platform are surprised their art is part of an AI tool . That is the lamf here.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    I double checked, everyone one of these aggregating artists have an Instagram, FashSky, Meta, or other Nazi apologizing business.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Everybody should dump X.

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    [–] 79 points 10 months ago* (9 children)

    leaving x or insta at this point means youre very.... very late to the party.

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  • [–] 100 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    Debian cut ties in January, so if you quit after that, you're officially slower to change than Debian.

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    +100


    Ubuntu is still on Twitter. You don't want Ubuntu to quit before you do, do you?

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Damn. Disappointed in Ubuntu and I’m not motivated to distro hop. But maybe it’s time to bite the bullet. It’s tricky because I also avoid software hosted on Microsoft services such as GitHub. Ubuntu being hosted on Launchpad helped there.

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  • [–] 216 points 10 months ago (14 children)

    “The Nazis were inconvenient, but the use of GenAI that you find everywhere else is a bridge too far!!”

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  • [–] 65 points 10 months ago

    Yeah, I'm not going to defend training AI with copyrighted works... But I'm not going to waste energy siding with anyone who was okay with X. If you stayed in X, you'vr made your own bed. Now don't cry because the owner is an AI-pandering nazi, we all knew that already.

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  • [–] [S] 20 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    Generally in Japan they don’t see much of Elon’s “prowesses”, so I can kinda understand why artists like him might not have caught wind of the Nazi direction the platform has taken until it actually hit them.

    And yes, Ignorantia non excusat, but it’s still something, at least.

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  • [–] 22 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    For anyone wondering, "Ignorantia non excusat" is Latin, and it means "I speak Latin, and you don't. Suck my balls."

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Japanese here. They do know.

    They choose to ignore.
    Precisely because they sympathize.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    I’m not saying every Japanese person still on there is unaware of that, but the general coverage is MUCH smaller than what you get if you’re in English-speaking spaces.

    I also heavily doubt someone of korean origins like Boichi is a Sanseito supporter, but that’s just my guess.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Sure. But the other artists in the article are English🌐 users.

    Japan is addicted to their SNS anyways.

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  • [–] 95 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    "OH, WELL NOW YOU'VE GONE TOO FAR!!!"

    • "Artists" who have been willingly playing in the unapologetic hate clubhouse for years after the owner nazi saluted twice at the American nazi party rally 2.0
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  • [–] 26 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    i was telling a buddy about that who somehow hadnt seen the salute or heard of it and my other buddy said well obama did that too and mentioned others. where they were stills taken out of a video that looked like the nazi salute. so i just pulled up the video and that was that lol

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  • [–] 38 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    who tf still uses Xitter...

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Some companies and government departments in my country use twitter and facebook exclusively for contact and info/news. It’s insane but I have to keep a passive account for this. Especially the government, because we have an official Mastodon server for that. Ughhh.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I literally don't know a single person from real life that uses it.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    Yeah, I never used it, except to follow links from lemmy/reddit, but even those acquaintances of mine that did use it, gradually stopped since Musk took over, with the last few leaving it around a year ago.

    (My vocally pro-LGBT workplace also switched to other platforms bc our engagement noticeably dropped around that time. Either due some Musk-induced algorithm shenanigans or just users leaving in droves.)

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  • [–] 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

    It always bothered me how so many Twitter users in Japan just kept using Xitter after everything Musk has done to it, like they're not even aware. I think the language barrier has been filtering some of it out until now.

    But,

    I am not afraid of AI; I believe in its future and potential. However, I cannot accept my work being used, learned from, or exploited without my consent.

    Boichi, that's what's been happening with AI to everybody's art this entire time!

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  • [–] [S] 38 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Yes, unfortunately Boichi is leaving… for Instagram.

    But hopefully this is at least a wake-up call for some artists that they should really consider leaving for platforms with “less malicious intentions”. Maybe one day someone as big as him will decide to go fediverse, we can only hope.

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  • [–] 34 points 10 months ago (1 child)
    • Everyone * should be abandoning twitter. Well, I guess the nazis can stay, it makes it easier to keep an eye on them.
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  • [–] 32 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

    In our world of people dismissing any issue that isn't their own, nothing matters, and only the worst people win.

    If people didn't leave before this, this or that group getting pissed off won't be the death of it then either.

    We don't need everyone to care about everything, but the current paradigm of not only apathy, but actively fighting against other peoples causes because they aren't your own has really doomed us.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I’m not necessarily saying this is the case for these artists, but the sad truth is the current society is perfectly engineered to make the average worker as apathetic as possible.

    You work 8 hours a day not counting commute and meals, which means you’re left with very little free time, and you’re really tired on top of that. Plenty of people choose to spend that time doing things that actually make them happy or relaxed, instead of looking at the state of the world and being even more sad because of learned (or sometimes even actual) helplessness.

    Of course, it would be better if they didn’t, but can you really blame them when the system is stacked against us?

    (Obviously the whole situation applies to the apathetic/apolitical ones, the “actively fighting against other peoples causes because they aren’t your own” bunch can go fuck themselves)

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Of course, it would be better if they didn’t, but can you really blame them when the system is stacked against us?

    Yes, specifically when they use even a tiny bit of that little free time to beat down others who actually try, or when they don't pay attention to the only ways they could possibly lessen the awful situation.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 10 months ago

    That’s what I said right after

    (Obviously the whole situation applies to the apathetic/apolitical ones, the “actively fighting against other peoples causes because they aren’t your own” bunch can go fuck themselves)

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    So you left the day he took it over as well ay?

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    Never had one actually. Like I might have created some temp at some point, but I've never really used it.

    Just about the only social media I do is either anonymous, person to person (like discord) or linked in because well... for obvious reasons.

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  • [–] 28 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Nah, they will stay there untill the site dissolves itself, some people are beyond repair.

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  • [–] 17 points 10 months ago

    Honestly I’m floored this is what it takes for some people to leave X. 🤷🏼‍♂️

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago

    Its OK for AI to edit artist's work because its out there

    but its not OK to repair an iPhone, John Deere tractor you own because copyright applies

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    Ugh, I'm so tired of this. I never had twitter in the first place, but I did used to have Instagram and I loved it for all the artists I'd follow on there. But I dropped that a year or two ago (officially deleted my accounts 😤) and just stuck with Tumblr ever since. But so many of my favorite former fanartists just REFUSE to let either service go, despite them very openly stating their new AI policies or worsening ToS policies.

    I know Bluesky will turn out the same way as the others, but I've been trying to encourage artists to move to BS and use bridgy fed so I can still see them on Mastodon. Like you'd literally get the visibility of TWO platforms by using bridgy fed rather than sticking with just Insta or just Twitter. And yes, Instagram and Twitter have bigger numbers than BS or the Fediverse, but one day the AI issues will grow too big and you'll lose those numbers anyway when you leave the platform. Plus how many of those numbers are bots anyway?

    But it just sucks man. I only have Tumblr and the occasional visit to Pixiv as my source of fanart. Mastodon and Pixelfed are just lacking, or make it very hard to find the artists I'm looking for (and I literally joined Pixelfed.art!). I've tried following hashtags but it's a little dry...

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Absolute facts. Also it’s one thing when it’s fanartists which just do that as a past time, but actual artists should have a dedicated team and it really shouldn’t be hard to crosspost on multiple platforms, should it…?

    It’s just free visibility that they’re ignoring, definitely a huge head scratcher.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago* (3 children)

    actual artists should have a dedicated team

    now thats some rich ass gatekeeping. AcTuAL arTISts sHOuld have dedicateD TeaMs? Get a clue drawers, painters, guitar players, singers, sculptors, etc. etc. who DON'T have a dedicated team to run your socials.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    “Actual artists” as opposed to “fanartists”, in the sense of “people who are under contract and are hired to do art as a job”.

    Of course I’m not saying people who don’t have a team aren’t “real artists”, it was just a way to differentiate fanartists from people like Boichi, I didn’t mean to sound gatekeeping.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Fair enough but still - Actual artists are not always under contract and hired to do art as a job. Many many amazing artists get little or no compensation for their efforts.

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  • [–] 27 points 10 months ago* (8 children)

    new tool could be used to modify others’ works without their consent.

    This specific part is kinda stupid.

    Nothing was ever preventing anyone from modifying an artists work. Its incredibly common. No one needs consent to modify anything.

    To distrubute something that isn't yours that doesn't fall under fair use, absolutely. But modifying without consent is a joke.

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  • [–] [S] 12 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    I think all the uproar is about new Grok functions that allow you to edit with AI and repost (aka distribute) images directly from within Xitter (I’m not sure that this is the case but I’m definitely not going to log in that thing to verify that).

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago* (3 children)

    I wasn't going to log in to verify either lol.

    Even if that's the case, it will come down to fair use policy which will allow quite a lot.

    If the specific instance of sharing isn't fair use and Twitter allows it, then sue them, someone will. Reddit for example though is just littered with modified images and they've been fine. Same with Lemmy.

    Edit: If someone starts trying to make money off modified images via Grok, then that becomes a much easier case to win.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    If someone starts trying to make money off modified images via Grok, then that becomes a much easier case to win.

    They can use it to farm engagement. Is that the same thing?

    And yeah, that's the icky part. This is a dream for spammers and "cheap SEO" types who don't really care about copyright law in this context.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    I wonder how that would go in court, I wonder if it's been tried before? I could see an argument that if that was the intention and how they made money via gained followers, even indirectly, maybe it wouldn't be fair use.

    Edit: Like if they gain followers reposting grok modified images, and then they also show sponsored ads to their followers, now they are benefiting commercially by gaining followers via modified grok images. That might not be fair use, assuming the modified item was fair use to begin with otherwise.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    Many artists explicitly state no repost without their permission, requiring proper credits and such. It IS a dick move to AIgen-fed edit while directly interacting author's post; that makes people using the AI feature violating author's will knowingly.

    In reality, people don't read artists' comment or bio, when "single button to AIgen and use the art as prompt" exists. It's basically X greenlits anyone to do so against artists' will, and fair use can argue the use of art but never force artists to stay on a platform. That's what's happening. They may have overstayed on a horrible platform blinded by clout they can get there but that is a different story.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Modifying without consent

    May I introduce to you, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    Hope you have the money to defend against claims in court.

    In fact the biggest problem with the DMCA is how easy it is to force an issue to court without penalties for filing fraudulent claims. Most people would have to just roll over and accept the takedown. No one can afford to test fair use against Sony, or Disney, or Nintendo.

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  • [–] 13 points 10 months ago

    If they’re leaving X now, they’ll probably be back. Everyone who actually wanted to leave on moral grounds probably left at least a year ago.

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  • [–] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Not an artist, but like to brag that Idumped that shitshow before is was known as X.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    If the platform formerly known as Twitter didn't die when it killed itself, it ain't going to die from this. Zombie Twitter will live on.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 10 months ago

    Ehh… it’s one of the biggest platforms in Japan, and if it starts pissing off that fanbase it’s not a good look. Definitely won’t “die” either, but it might be a considerable hit (and hopefully boost for the Fediverse, or at least Bluesky).

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    FROM THE LAST MINUTE

    Artists can't wait to leave one sunken boat, for another, a little less sunken one.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    A US judge can't give you a free pass to use copyrighted work of non-US artists.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Articles titled like this and always crap

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