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Speaking of AI in fandoms, I'd love to bring AI Fanfiction to the discussion. Because that's been eye opening. (I'm also too stupid at art to really understand how much work goes into one image.) It's serious theft, it's a robot puking back up what it's seen before and you can feel it in the writing it makes. It claims in the narration that the characters are feeling things and learning when that isn't what's happening. Nothing real is going on. And you can feel it in Every. Single. Sentence. It's honestly horrible, and I've been against it since its creation. But recently I noticed something absolutely insane and disheartening.
I'm a senior in highschool (17, going on 18), and all of the new sophomores are using AI. All of them. These 15 year olds are openly talking about their use of AI fanfic and AI fanart. And listening to them rattle on and on about how cool it is to have a way to bring these things to life via AI made me realize something. These kids aren't trying to be thieves. It's not that they lack morals, or are lazy. They haven't thought about the full implications of it, sure, but there's an underlying issue here.
They're using AI because they don't think they can make anything worthwhile themselves. And that makes my blood boil.
Something about AI is making these kids think that the only way to enjoy fan content the way they picture it in their head is to have something more "qualified" to do it. AI is telling these kids that they suck at art. That they suck at writing. And that there's nothing they can do about it. And they're just young enough to accept that.
And y'know what? They probably do suck. But that's a good thing! The best thing about fandom is the way it uses people's passion for their favorite things and turns it into skill.
We all sucked at what we do when we were younger. I sucked at grammar when I started writing. My concepts were killer but my execution was just abysmal. But my love for the original content fueled me to keep going. To keep trying and I'd say that now my writing is pretty darn good. I see such talented people draw wonderful things because fandom made them practice. Fandom constantly brings out the best in people. We're really good at these things now. We don't need a dumb robot to do it worse.
But fandom has changed. Now there's an easy way to create something without becoming a creator. These insecure kids are entering fandoms with that concept in mind. And when they see that they suck, they hit that ever present roadblock of worrying you won't get better. But now they have an out. While we all had to figure out how to get over said roadblock, they just pressed the skip button, because it was there. They skipped the most important thing you could possibly learn in life, because some a-hole made a skip button.
It's like they're sequence breaking life, missed a power up, and feel like the only way to succeed is to keep using the cheat code that got them stuck in the first place.
These poor kids, man. AI isn't just the death of creativity, it's the death of ambition, and self-esteem. These kids aren't the problem, they're the victims. Victims of this toxic mindset that AI put into their heads.
I'm starting to see AI art in fanart tags and even when they are tagged as AI art, people in the reblogs tagged it as fanart.
Let me just say this once. I don't believe AI art is fanart. The way things are, it's theft. It doesn't count. The effort that fan artists put into their works cannot be equated in value with whatever an AI generates. The works with hours of applied skill and originality and love put into them are the works I want to praise on this blog.
So that being said, if I ever reblog "fanart" that is ai generated, please send me a message or an ask and let me know so I can delete it off my blog.