I'll bang this drum til I die.
I've spent the last half year investigating the nefarious interests behind the anti-AI Backlash. The results were surprising.
May 6, 2025 21:30Post with alt text for those who need it! (Slightly edited to fit everything.)
He replied, but my reply to him is not showing up on the video (though I COULD find it in my Comment History), and no new posts from me are showing up. I do at least want to post the response here. (In two parts, for the sake of alt-text.)
You can't be a leftist and defend gen-AI. Because it requires saying that the product is more important than people who make it, and if people don't come first, you're not a leftist. Gen-AI doesn't free a person from a menial assembly line job. It makes an artist unable to pursue their passion.
utterly baffling seeing a guy who famously got plagiarized by another creator going to bat for the plagiarism machine.
‘did you actually watch the video’ i squeak over and over, slowly transforming into a corncob
Are you asking me? Because I watched it from beginning to end.
Get his boot-licking ass
Who is this dipshit and why did he just make me block him?
I’ve stopped referring to it as Al art and I now just say Al pictures.
Because that’s all it is. Without the emotion, creative drive, or passion behind it, it’s just a picture.
I unsubbed Avila because over this take. AI is not only theft; it is such a waste of resources that it is accelerating climate change. Avila had his work plagiarised by James Somerton. He should know better than to defend automated plagiarism.
Avila: People only hate this video because they didn't watch it!
Scott and his amazing response he had ready after thoroughly going through said video:
I hate that we're still calling generative models AI. It's bothered me since I first heard it. AI has been used for decades in science fiction to mean sentient machines. We don't have Terminators, Transformers, i-Robot, or Android 16/17/18. We have algorithms that need to be told what to output.
Theres an even easier angle.
People who just generate code until they get something that works are not considered programmers or engineers. These people would be horrified if someone did that and landed a job, because they don't understand how what they just applied works.
But its fine for art?
"EMULATION of artistic expression" is so spot-on.
As fan of Avila’s work, I totes agree with you on this.
I can appreciate the philosophical lens through which he discusses the topic, and there’s plenty of fascinating points he made, but the harm AI does to real world artists shouldn’t be undermined.
And this is without going into the environmental impact- even if we choose to ignore the myriad other issues with Gen AI, it's actively worsening the already-precarious climate change situation, which in the long term *will kill us all.* AI art is NOT worth that, and I'm not gonna pretend it is.
Alot of the points brought up felt... extremely centrist in terms of the subject.
Gen AI can't have fence sitters, mostly because it's supporters are clearly AGAINST creatives.
Certain AI tools can be useful, but certainly not generative AI. I'm really disappointed in Alex with this vid...
Dammit Scott I love you
Platonically.
Tilting my head slowly sounding like a creaky pipe processing that this person claimed artists against GenAI are operating with "a capitalist mindset" when it's built and trained on the literal exploitation of labor
"if you don't fall on your knees and masturbate in worship at the altar of capitalist rot it's because you actually love capitalism" is certainly a Take one could have, i suppose
It's just an autocomplete that collages stolen ideas together in a way that is statistically likely according to it's algorithms. It can only do poor imitations, and can never create anything new. It makes worse "art" by stealing labour from actual humans.
Also the environmental impact.
*its algorithms
I had never heard of Alex Aliva before this, and I will now continue to never hear of Alex Aliva
the thing is Alexander Avila isn't a leftist, he's a liberal. leftists don't shill for the DNC.
I never knew who this guy was before.
Now I never will.
The curious thing is I've seen this particular stance on AI elsewhere in the furry community. Problem being that they mistake the "idealistic POSSIBLE future of AI" for how AI should be treated now, and what it is doing now.
Good summary of what it means to create art
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5wL...
You are a better writer than AI. (Yes, you.)
YouTube video by josh (with parentheses)
Generative AI output is also inherently scabby. It’s taking the work of creative humans and replacing it with output from models owned by billionaires and corporations, using resources scraped unter the pretense of academic research, funneling wealth away from workers in order to create ugly slop.
People say “you liked it until you learned it was made by AI” like it’s a gotcha, but yes! This can be true! I am not interested in what a program has output, just because of the mere fact that a program did it. That is not interesting to me at all!
(I mean, it also always sucks in other ways.)
Passionate and eloquent. Two attributes I've never seen when reading support for genAI.
Precisely why my partner and I stopped watching Avila sadly
(Please add alt text when possible!)
Crap, I don't think I can after it's been posted. @.@ Sorry. I always forget to do that; I haven't made it a habit yet.
A.I being used to replace VA's, actors, writers, and any artistic field is bad. I find the technology fascinating and use A.I to remove things from pictures I take but that is the extent of my use of that.
..... didn't he make the list of people plagiarized by Somerton? That makes it especially infuriating that he's defending the plagiarism machine
Scott, how dare you continue to be so right with such incredible artistic integrity?
teller, from Penn and teller, supposedly describes art as "anything we do after the bills are paid." it says something that pretty universally if humans don't have to worry about food or shelter we make art, doodles, poems, cave paintings. AI is all about paying bills and incapable of "art"
damn you didn’t just bang the drum you went full art blakey
Thank you for this, I really thought I was the only one who felt disappointed by this entire video's often odd framing of AI as somehow acceptable.
I ain't watching his video but I think it's hilarious that someone who was being plagiarised and stolen from is defending the theft and plagiarism machine from what I understand "to dunk on big business" which are the people developing and funding the tool he defends, like come on dude get a clue
What you wrote is what I've been telling people.
I watched the video, it is frustrating.
Just about the only point I agree with it is that the solution is not extending the copyright law the way some of the documents shown were suggesting.
Basically everything else he says misses so much.
Heck, I would even take it a step further than any argument he takes on.
Use of AI can be actively harmful to you.
This isn't even a hot take, you have fun articles now about people thinking that the AI is sentient and special - and losing their goddamn minds.
As someone who loves art down to the smallest details and can go on end about what I like about x piece vs y...pop off my dude! 😁
The thing people forget about ready-mades is that they still had to be MADE. That was literally the point, taking preexisting objects and organizing them in a way that would render them useless.
Generative AI “art” is to actual art what a bird mimicking your voice back to you is to speech. The bird has no concept of the sounds it produced. But it might adapt to outputting certain kinds of “speech” in response to the right “prompts”. Do people really think those birds are talking to them?
I think this may be the first time I’ve ever seen someone take three hours to miss the point.
Oh thank god you put it into words, I was struggling articulating how I felt, and this is close enough
AI should be banned outright, same goes for algorithims in all forms.
Return to 2005 please.
Hey, guess which comment thread just coincidentally cannot be found under their video anymore?
"Hey, please tell me one thing I got wrong"
"Literally everything, factually and morally."
"[Deletes the comment] Nothing to see here, folks!"
i don't totally disagree with this comment and I agree with how you *feel* about most generated imagery, but this comment doesn't really do much to rebut anything he says in the video
why can't people have a weak opinion in good faith? it's always "appalling" and we rush to excommunicate ASAP
i think there's plenty of merit in saying that the comparison between the process of LLM image generation and collage/found art is incorrect but we're gonna need more than invoking that it's "insulting" to get anywhere. vibes alone aren't an argument
I haven't watched the video yet, but as an actual, real artist who creates art without gen ai, I do want to ask a more philosophical question:
for you, does the soul/emotion/meaning/power of a piece of ai art change depend on who's using it and what their intent behind it is?
"sophistry" is exactly the right word, I still cannot believe that bit about all the mean anti-AI comments on Reddit that we apparently needed to see before we got to the outline of anti-AI criticism.
What an absolute Cro-Magnon of an individual. Glad people are rightfully shitting on him
here's something to get your blood boiling, 400 million users weekly use ChatGTP. SO YES! WE HAVE TO KEEP SAYING THIS! Because clearly it's just multiplying, hand crafted work adds more character, MORE AUTHENTICITY!
thank you!
I'm with you on this.
I've had to leave communities and cut off people I've known for YEARS because they used AI art around me. And I voiced my problems with AI usage with them multiple times.
I tried to be neutral, but that only let it fester and enable further usage. I ended up burning bridges.
Nowadays, I'm ZERO-TOLERANCE to GenAI stuff.
I catch anyone in my circles/following using it, insta-blocked. Maybe sometimes I'd drag them into a DM and confront them, but pretty much I tell them I'm done associating with them and burn any bridge I have with them.
This seems like an incredibly counterproductive video for a "leftist" to make
Thank you I don't have to tell them now that " gurl don't play warm potatoe ai is bad "
I appreciate you having the patience to tear guys like this up, Scott
Corpos in full damage control mode trying to artwash Ai.
Hey genuine question: I thought the biggest problem of it was consent related to grabbing artists work and using A**I** to reproduce it without consent.
Can A**I** be used in a good way? Brainstorming, paintovers, etc? I'm not pro A**I** gen in any way btw.
Honestly man, you are the one who got me thinking about this kind of stuff and made me appreciate the love of craft. Watching you show you process editing DBZA helped craft how I see video making and editing
No way you posted your own youtube comment dawg
Yes.
This is just so fundamentally correct
1/5 I saw these clips and it gets worse. You got all the classic hits:
1. Our lawsuit got dismissed (it didnt)
2. While simultaneously dismissing that our case being allowed to move on copyright claims is no big deal (it is)
3. GenAi is like a search engine (it’s not)
Random Tangent: I’ve been watching a lot of movies that have been on my back burner for years (Truman Show, Sunset Blvd etc) and the difference between real art and AI is so staggering they don’t belong in the same conversation.
Succinct, poignant, and fundamentally hitting it all on the head, fuck yeah dude! Sigh... I know a lot of us all fucking hate AI, but I still feel so much relief whenever someone is vocally against it. I feel like I'm losing my mind with how hard it's being pushed to me and around me
As you should. This drum NEEDS to be banged until it's broken.
ok i feel slightly better about having posted a super long youtube comment pointing out insane flaws in someone who should know betters logic recently if you have also done it...
also yeah youre completely right.
i bet no one called you hysterical for it though sice youre not a woman. 🥲
I have not had the opportunity to watch the video yet but based on what I've heard and having seen similar takes like this in the past it seems like he's conflating corporations utilizing AI backlash to tighten their grip on IP laws and his conclusion is that generative AI art is meaningful art.
Alas, the fatal curse of people not understanding that two things seemingly in conflict can both be bad.
grateful people out there like you have the ability to express exactly how i feel in such a succinct and impactful way. very well said, I'll be saving this to show people... i always struggle to find the words myself 💚
Real and true
Very well said
I don't know who Alex Avila is but I have to assume that the video they made is 100% AI generated and probably has hallucinations etc. I have actual humans in my life who are kinda changing my mind on the usefulness of AI, a fully generated AI youtube isn't really worth my time.
"I see a concept that was put through a program that produced something that will always be inherently disconnected from the person who conceived it."
I think this is it for me. Every line drawn, brush stroke, image chosen is a personal choice I'm interested in, whether I like the image or not.
I feel like you should make a video on this topic. Your popularity as a creative should help drive the point home to so many people. And of course you'll get to snipe asshats in the comments.
"while exceptions can be found"
I think an exception could be as a feedback/critique machine:
"Hey genAI, here's this thing I'm making; I'm aiming for this result. Am I doing it accurately, or can you recommend any changes?", and then discerning which parts of its response to adopt/reject.
And in addition GenAI has been very much adapted by people who would burn down Congress and blame any number of minorities for it before sending out ICE to send them to prison camps in El Salvador. And also start a World War to add more Living Space (or rather oil deposits) to the US.
So, yeah, not gonna use something so inherently entrenched in literal fascism.
Damn Kaiserneko, I always knew you were one cool cat
as Cupcakke always say:
🎵Smack my ass like the drum🎵
(I love the internet… 😅🤣)
He speaks for all of us
PREACH
Good man.
I don't think I could watch this video for more than a few seconds, without skipping around half hour chunks.
I know it's sincere, but the youtube video essay genre is just a parody of itself far too often. Couldn't even make it to the thesis.
Cooked'em!
[This post was deleted]
Maybe I'm not politically educated enough, but I rather live under capitalism than live without art.
Keep shouting it!!! There are still people that agree with every single word you wrote and I am one of them!
pale simulacra
you'll hardly beat on alone
I’ve stopped referring to it as Al art and I now just say Al pictures. Because that’s all it is. Without the emotion, creative drive, or passion behind it, it’s just a picture.
