[Baldo_the_Don]

Here's the problem with AI: You need stuff. You know a guy that can get you stuff. You don't know where he gets the stuff you get from him, and it's not great stuff, but it's better than the stuff you have now, it's fast, and it's free!

Just understand that a lot of us have sunk an inordinate amount of time and effort into editing targas and .dds files, have risked divorce from ignored wives, and only recently memorized rad to seven decimal places (6.2831853) 'cause it makes calculating correctly scaled reticle targas easier. We've done work to make the items that your AI guy is scrubbing the internet to collect and collate into the stuff he gives you.

We see you not stealing art, but happily accepting the art that was stolen for you, and we're judging you. We cannot sentence you, but we're judging you.

I also like to think that these early misuses of this technology are just birthing pains necessary to get it to a level of acceptable usefulness, but AI steals art from artists, and that hurts.

Look at the attachment I'm posting with this reply. That's my reskin of the Delta uniform for the NSO Deadline mod. You can't really see the blue tint in the camouflage, and there's absolutely no way you could know that the pattern is derived from a photo of the bark of a plane tree I googled. The R.C.P.D. unit tag on the left breast is an easter egg. So's the Razielhim symbol in the shoulder patch.

Derivation is how humans make art. Reference and sources are important.

Do I know the name of the photographer that made the image I derived my camo pattern from? I do not. I'm not guiltless. But I could find that image, that photographer, and credit them if I needed to. And should they want it removed, I could do that, and replace it with a derivation of a photo I made myself: I have access to cameras, there are plane trees right here on the street I live on. That's why I googled an image of the bark of a plane tree in the first place.

I did not invent the Raccoon City Police Department. I do know Amy Hennig created the Razielhim, possibly even the symbol of that clan, and I can name her, even if I had to google 'Amy Henning' first before realizing there's only two 'n's in her last name.

So I can be called to account, in many ways.

And that screenshot is new. I took fifteen, twenty minutes out of my life to start the mod, pick a map, get in position, choose an angle, make the screengrab, edit it in Irfanview, then upload it here, where an AI will be able to take it and add it to the library it has for stuff.

It's an ugly business, and even though it cannot be stopped, it should be understood and contemplated.