AI is fed with theft
6 June 2025 07:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_novel_heroEric Larson has run Teslacon for many years out of Madison, Wisconsin and, in the before times, I attended and presented regularly, even from the very first one. Recently Eric announced a project of his that, in his words, he is “finally able to do the way he wanted to.” The Steampunk Civil War.
Here’s the thing. . . two things, actually.
The first is the use of Generative AI.
AI is fed with theft and has the devaluation of humans as its business model. It’s a phrase I use again and again because it is true. AI could not do what it does without stealing billions of images from the Internet. Developers and lawyers for those AI companies have admitted before congress and in court that, if they had to pay for or even ask for permission to use that copyrighted material, those costs would bankrupt them. They literally HAVE to steal from artists or else they cannot exist. They have gone to tremendous lengths to not say that it is stealing but it is what it is.
And their business model involves stealing all this material to feed their system and then flooding the marketplace with cheap art. They enlist the general public in this endeavor by providing AI tools for cheap or even for free so that their proxies can not only flood the market with content but also boost their own egos into believing that they themselves created something. And then, with egos inflated, they enter themselves into the market to compete directly with real human artists.
And get away with it. We all know that AI art is rife with flaws, the many fingered hand being the most prominent example, but if an image can overcome enough of those flaws, not even all or most but merely enough, that image can get bought because it is offered at a cut rate of both time and money.
There is so much of it out there that real human artists simply cannot compete. And that is what it’s for. So that companies can not have to hire bothersome humans to to the job. Companies will even invest more money in AI than they will in artists to do the same work just so they can not hire humans.
So here we have Eric running a steampunk convention. Even though he has a team of people to help him, he holds complete control over what goes on and how the story unfolds. He is a one man show. And, early on, most of the images he used in promoting and fleshing out his convention were photo-collages, photo-manipulation, and traditional graphic design. I’ve done a little bit of that and it is a fuck-ton of work.
AI is seductive in that it offers to do all that work for you, quickly, at volume, and on the cheap. I have watched over the years as AI became better and better, Eric has used it more and more. And, from the image above and others, it’s pretty clear that to finally be able to do things the way he wants, he is going to have AI do it for him.
The second thing is that I already did a lot of this thing for him.
Eric had wanted to write a history presenting the American Civil War in the Teslacon universe but didn’t have the time to do that, running the convention itself and all. In 2012, he gave me a 2 page outline of a 15 year long American Civil War and, by the end of the summer I had had spent hundreds of hours researching and writing, giving him a 26,000 word novella-length history.
A World Unmade: a steampunk history.
Eric used none of it.
If he doesn’t use any of the storyline or work that I did for him, well, it’s been abandoned all this time, continued obscurity will make it no worse.
If he does use my storyline, or significant portions of the story I wrote, I would hope that he would at least give me credit for that work being as it has been unused for a dozen years. But, to be honest, with that credit I will be disappointed and embarrassed that my work will be devalued by being attached to image after image of stolen AI slop.
If he uses my work and doesn’t give me credit, well, AI is fed with theft and mine will be just another meal to feed the machine.
And this is the saddest part. Conventions rely on creative artists. It’s hard to imagine any fan convention existing at all without a dealer’s room full of artists and craftspeople selling their creations. There would be no panels or presentations without creative people smithing words and images together to present for an appreciative audience.
AI changes that dynamic. Not only in the content itself, but in the minds of the people running things. Eric has made it clear that he will brook no criticism of his use of AI. And as I encounter more and more people who use and promote AI, they know how it works. They know that it steals from artists. They know that it exists to replace humans from the creating process. They know it all, but. . . they are OK with that. They are ok with stealing, they are ok with devaluing, they are ok with dehumanization, so long as they get the cheap product they want.
And then you have to wonder, if they are ok with stealing the art of a million artists for their convention promotional material, how do they view the individual artist in their dealer’s room. Are they reduced to just the cost of renting the table?
I didn’t get paid for what I did in writing the Steampunk Civil War. Honestly, I didn’t expect to get paid, nor did I ask. It was something I did for the convention and for Eric because I loved the convention. I loved the thing he was doing. I loved him. Was I wrong? Was getting my work for free part of his business model then? With so much AI, has it become part of his business model now?
I hate that AI corporations, built on theft and dehumanization, have done this thing to me. And to Eric. And to all those other people who, unknowingly, unthinkingly, rob and devalue their fellow humans over a bunch of pixels fed through a blender and regurgitated back out as something resembling art.
Here’s the thing. . . two things, actually.
The first is the use of Generative AI.
AI is fed with theft and has the devaluation of humans as its business model. It’s a phrase I use again and again because it is true. AI could not do what it does without stealing billions of images from the Internet. Developers and lawyers for those AI companies have admitted before congress and in court that, if they had to pay for or even ask for permission to use that copyrighted material, those costs would bankrupt them. They literally HAVE to steal from artists or else they cannot exist. They have gone to tremendous lengths to not say that it is stealing but it is what it is.
And their business model involves stealing all this material to feed their system and then flooding the marketplace with cheap art. They enlist the general public in this endeavor by providing AI tools for cheap or even for free so that their proxies can not only flood the market with content but also boost their own egos into believing that they themselves created something. And then, with egos inflated, they enter themselves into the market to compete directly with real human artists.
And get away with it. We all know that AI art is rife with flaws, the many fingered hand being the most prominent example, but if an image can overcome enough of those flaws, not even all or most but merely enough, that image can get bought because it is offered at a cut rate of both time and money.
There is so much of it out there that real human artists simply cannot compete. And that is what it’s for. So that companies can not have to hire bothersome humans to to the job. Companies will even invest more money in AI than they will in artists to do the same work just so they can not hire humans.
So here we have Eric running a steampunk convention. Even though he has a team of people to help him, he holds complete control over what goes on and how the story unfolds. He is a one man show. And, early on, most of the images he used in promoting and fleshing out his convention were photo-collages, photo-manipulation, and traditional graphic design. I’ve done a little bit of that and it is a fuck-ton of work.
AI is seductive in that it offers to do all that work for you, quickly, at volume, and on the cheap. I have watched over the years as AI became better and better, Eric has used it more and more. And, from the image above and others, it’s pretty clear that to finally be able to do things the way he wants, he is going to have AI do it for him.
The second thing is that I already did a lot of this thing for him.
Eric had wanted to write a history presenting the American Civil War in the Teslacon universe but didn’t have the time to do that, running the convention itself and all. In 2012, he gave me a 2 page outline of a 15 year long American Civil War and, by the end of the summer I had had spent hundreds of hours researching and writing, giving him a 26,000 word novella-length history.
A World Unmade: a steampunk history.
Eric used none of it.
If he doesn’t use any of the storyline or work that I did for him, well, it’s been abandoned all this time, continued obscurity will make it no worse.
If he does use my storyline, or significant portions of the story I wrote, I would hope that he would at least give me credit for that work being as it has been unused for a dozen years. But, to be honest, with that credit I will be disappointed and embarrassed that my work will be devalued by being attached to image after image of stolen AI slop.
If he uses my work and doesn’t give me credit, well, AI is fed with theft and mine will be just another meal to feed the machine.
And this is the saddest part. Conventions rely on creative artists. It’s hard to imagine any fan convention existing at all without a dealer’s room full of artists and craftspeople selling their creations. There would be no panels or presentations without creative people smithing words and images together to present for an appreciative audience.
AI changes that dynamic. Not only in the content itself, but in the minds of the people running things. Eric has made it clear that he will brook no criticism of his use of AI. And as I encounter more and more people who use and promote AI, they know how it works. They know that it steals from artists. They know that it exists to replace humans from the creating process. They know it all, but. . . they are OK with that. They are ok with stealing, they are ok with devaluing, they are ok with dehumanization, so long as they get the cheap product they want.
And then you have to wonder, if they are ok with stealing the art of a million artists for their convention promotional material, how do they view the individual artist in their dealer’s room. Are they reduced to just the cost of renting the table?
I didn’t get paid for what I did in writing the Steampunk Civil War. Honestly, I didn’t expect to get paid, nor did I ask. It was something I did for the convention and for Eric because I loved the convention. I loved the thing he was doing. I loved him. Was I wrong? Was getting my work for free part of his business model then? With so much AI, has it become part of his business model now?
I hate that AI corporations, built on theft and dehumanization, have done this thing to me. And to Eric. And to all those other people who, unknowingly, unthinkingly, rob and devalue their fellow humans over a bunch of pixels fed through a blender and regurgitated back out as something resembling art.
Thoughts
Date: 2025-06-07 04:04 am (UTC)When I was growing up, there were many artists and models who made a living on book covers across multiple genres. Over the last 2-3 decades, there's been a steady decline of cover quality as publishers decided to skip the cover art and just slap some text on there. Science fiction used to have gorgeous spacescapes. Romance used to have lovely soft pr0n. Now the covers are often ugly, off-putting clip art. So of course, if AI can look better than bad clip art, it will be used. It's nowhere near as good as a painting, but people aren't going to commission that painting today anyway. It will be AI or it will be clip art / text. Sad. They don't stop to think that their choices mean less art in the world, less creativity, less opportunity to make a living.
A book cover has one job -- make people pick up the book. I picked up every Larry Elmore cover, every Michael Whelan cover; I could recognize them across the room. With only text or clip art, all you have left is the author's name (if not a big name, useless) and the title (often generic). So that's a problem.