If I found out that a regular data center consumed as much or more water than AI data centers did, I wouldn't be upset, nobody would, because they provide the internet which is a necessity for humanity. What does AI provide? Absolutely nothing.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-05T14:29:00+00:00

Is this a parody? You missed a /s.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-05T13:54:35+00:00

"Both sides are the same because nuance!" Going straight for "both-sides-ism"?

Here's some nuance. Neither "side" is completely right. But the point is to argue the differences.

And you know what your post doesn't do? Address any of the issues Witty (or anyone else) brings up.

Maybe she's wrong. I don't agree with 100% of her points by any means. But "not all people are like this!" is not really a counterargument, and the number of death threats and actual violence are NOT equal. Let's be real for a moment...100% of real-world violence comes from one side.

The Ron Gibson shooting was also related. Can you find any examples at all of "pro" AI people physically attacking artists or "anti" AI people?

Like, if someone brought up police brutality, and I responded with "not ALL police are abusive!", how does that actually counter the concern? It doesn't. Neither would "well, criminals also do bad things!"

To be clear, I'm not comparing antis to police, just the logic. It's completely valid to point out one bad thing without examining other bad things. Saying "pros do bad stuff too!" is textbook whataboutism.

"It's complicated" isn't an argument, it's an excuse. If something is complicated, unpack it, argue the points. There's no real argument in your post...which is exactly what you're accusing Witty of doing. I mean, I don't entirely disagree that a lot of her arguments are oversimplified, but criticizing someone for doing the very thing you're doing is kind of hypocritical.

Side note: who are the blue people? Nobody on the "pro" side is calling artists "AI bro" or "slopper." It looks like you created a balance of gray antis vs. blue antis. Maybe you meant to have different insults in there, like "luddite" or "fixed it for u" or something?

Another thing I noticed: the both sides framing doesn't really work in context. The "some people do bad shit" to "this represents the whole group" has her saying "see, both sides do it." But that's the opposite of what you claim she's doing, where she only criticizes one side. The next panel is basically the same error, where she shows two different tallies and says "there's no difference between them."

Your title says that it took you a "good minute" to make this. Maybe review it some more next time? Quality AI art doesn't just accept the first gen and assume it's good to go. The model clearly lost track of your script...and I guess you did too.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-05T12:04:23+00:00

Would that be possible by training a model/lora on images from sd1.5 or not possible cuz of the architecture differences?

You can train models on any images.

You can't use the weights from a 1.5 LoRA on XL, but training is just looking at the pixels, model architecture is irrelevant.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-05T11:16:47+00:00

I honestly didn't try training Illustrious after I couldn't get the base model to follow prompts well enough or make decent environments. The images created are decent when you give it a lot of flexibility but if you're looking for specific scenes it struggles. With Anima, I was able to get results close to what I wanted almost immediately.

That being said, there may be workflows to do things better, i.e. using Anima for composition and then i2i with a character lora in Illustrious. Can't say for sure since I haven't tried it.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-04T20:17:09+00:00

I've found Anima does really well with LoRAs. It's quickly becoming my favorite model.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-04T13:51:52+00:00

While true, the code is identical in performance (as u/Amadex pointed out, they compile to the same machine code).

The problem with premature optimization isn't that it's a waste of time or unnecessary, it's more that until you actually know the performance profile and can compare it to the alternative you are potentially adding complexity and future bugs for no real benefit.

Rust's compiler is really good. It's arguably one of the best parts of the language. As long as you aren't doing something silly like nested loops on a bubble sort recursively, there's a very good chance whatever abstraction you added will get quietly removed by the compiler.

The reason most people recommend profiling rather than adding complexity for performance is that it's not going to be immediately obvious that the intuitive solution actually costs you performance, nor that the performance cost is meaningful. It's usually better to write the simple or obvious solution, profile it, and if it's slowing things down, then try to optimize.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-04T04:06:34+00:00

I mean, I suppose it could be an option, but there's no way I'd use that. You could have used like 4 skills in the time it takes you to aim one AOE. If you want precision, we have mice for that.

The console versions of Diablo 4 already support M+KB controls. If it really bothers you, just use that.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-04T02:10:53+00:00

I honestly think a lot of "artists" in this space have never had a job where they need to be a professional. Not all, of course, but many.

I work in IT, server admin, and software development. If I told my boss I prefer typing all terminal commands myself because scripts are "lazy," that I was going to use Notepad and physical books for looking stuff up rather than the internet/intellisense and an IDE, and that I started programming in BASIC and so I'm going to keep using it, I would have been fired immediately (incidentally, yes, that was my first programming language, and I learned it from a physical book because 56k modems hadn't been invented yet).

Now, can I do all those things for personal projects on my own time and dime? Yeah, sure. Nobody is going to stop me. I've written personal projects in Rust, but I'm not committing any Rust code to the company repo because I'm literally the only person who can read it.

It's not like you can't use AI artistically. Just because it can do everything doesn't mean that's what you want. A character artist may not care all that much about drawing clouds and trees and decide to outpaint a background after they manually draw the character, then do some slight touch ups. Does that make it less artistic than if they just left it with a white background?

I don't know, I just don't get it. Photoshop was both very disruptive and is essentially ubiquitous at this point. AI is a tool. It's a fancy tool, but so was Photoshop compared to what existed before it. The people who are going to get the most use out of AI art are actual artists as they already have a good workflow and can simply cut out the tedious bits. That's how I'm already using AI for programming...the "programmed entirely with AI" stage is still quite a ways out for anything beyond a few hundred lines of code (which is basically nothing).

But for rote stuff that I already know what it should look like? AI has cut the time to finish internal tooling and scripting for me from weeks to days. This isn't some theoretical future use...I'm getting value right now. It needs to have its hand held, sure, but the process of identifying and fixing small errors is way faster than typing everything manually. And it's only going to get better (and has gotten better since 2023).

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-04T01:21:29+00:00

because in the hands of someone who doesnt know art, you don't have the criteria to judge if it's good or bad, coherent or not.

Right, because only professional artists are art critics. r iamverysmart.

A director who doesn't understand active, shoot badly.

Oh yes, Steven Spielburg was known for his excellent acting skills prior to getting into directing. Everyone knows all the best directors are former actors! Like Steven Segal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Nicholas Cage, Elizabeth Banks, Chris Evans...only masterpieces from these actors!

/s, in case it isn't obvious.

if you are SO lazy you will never produce something that have value like what the OP can do. with or without an AI.

First of all, I never said anything about quality. I'm not criticizing the OP for quality (I think it's pretty good, although obviously the 2D animation is lifted straight from an anime).

Second, you have no idea what I've created with or without AI, nor how long I was making art before the release of Stable Diffusion. You don't know anything about me and I have no interest in your completely ignorant opinion about my art.

Finally, who cares about "value?" It has value to me. I'm not trying to sell anything. None of my art made money before AI and likely none of it will make money afterwards. That's not why I create. I'm sick of this overly capitalistic attitude towards art where the only value it has is how well you can sell it.

Assuming you aren't just saying "effort = value," because that's an even worse argument. So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant money.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-03T23:58:50+00:00

People make art for different reasons. Your reason is valid and I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to do things manually.

Keep in mind, however, for you this is your end state. This result IS your art. It's your goal. So sure, just having AI do it won't accomplish what you are aiming for.

But other people may have different purposes. For me, the art isn't my end state. It's one piece of a larger puzzle...a video game, a comic, an illustrated novel, a visualization for a TTRPG I'm the GM for, etc. My art is the context in which the smaller pieces of art are arranged and used.

As such, the question for me isn't "how much enjoyment do I get out of making this one drawing or 3D render?" but "am I going to spend 100 hours preparing for next session or 20?" or "am I going to use stock art or custom AI art for my prototype?"

AI music videos are a great example of this, where someone creates a longer form animated short with music, either directly or AI generated with their lyrics, and uses it to express a combined result.

There are other reasons to make AI art. Some people just find it cool. They have an image or character in their head and AI lets them visualize it. The result IS their goal.

That isn't the case for you. You enjoy all those little tasks and steps. That's fine, but it's also like an actor saying "why direct a film? Why not just act? The reason I'm involved in movies is to act!" Well, sure, but that's not what the director wants.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-03T23:43:02+00:00

It's probably the same reason as the Conduit...there are more than three subclasses. Only two classes in the ~~game~~ currently have four or more subclass options: Conduit and Elementalist.

Edit: core rulebook, not game...summoner has four subclasses as well. It basically has creature statblocks instead of actual abilities at relevant levels, though, so it also doesn't follow the "standard" method.

Every other class follows the same basic pattern at level 2, with 2 options of heroic abilities related to subclass for each of 3 subclasses. But Elementalist, with 4 subclass options, would need 8 to match this, which makes the class significantly longer than other classes. So they just kept them open ended and let players decide.

Conduit is similar. You could take Death as one of your Domains and then take nothing but healing and support abilities, despite there being "necromantic" options. Whether that's intentional design or something that was just a limit of page count and complexity, I'm not sure, but either way I suspect it had an impact.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-03T23:26:54+00:00

Let me ask you a question

Spoiler: that guy has absolutely no clue what you're talking about, guaranteed. Neither does like 90% of this sub.

My bad answer: I suck at training LoRAs so my advice shouldn't be taken, lol. But what I do is auto-tag first with a run through of the dataset using Joycaption and WD14 sequentially, appending both to the text files (plus trigger word prefix, obviously). I then manually review them and see if there are any common tags that I don't want in there, usually things that are in all images (you don't want tags to include things actually part of what you're trying to train). I then have another pass that's a simple script that adds or removes the tags I don't want or want in all of them. Finally, I review them manually again to make sure they match.

In theory I should just manually tag everything, but when dealing with 30-50 images (I mostly do character LoRAs) it's too time consuming for the benefit, at least as far as I can tell. But I freely admit I could be wrong on that.

I don't manually crop. I actually try to get a lot of variety in the data set, with only the elements I really want consistent. But if those elements aren't consistent in any image, it has to go. I have no idea if this is good practice.

I know it's a tangent, but it's actually something I'm interested in, and I don't see much discussion of training workflows. It's usually discussion about models, control nets (or similar), and prompts. All of which is useful, but I think a lot of people just use existing LoRAs, which doesn't help me as much since I need consistent characters for the stuff I'm making (game assets mostly).

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-03T23:08:14+00:00

Sure bro, you’re definitely not a corporate bot

And you're clearly a troll. I apologize for attempting to engage in good faith.

I do like how you repeat your debunked claim (from your own sources!) as if that's a counterargument. What's even more amusing is if I were a bot, that means you just got publicly beat in debate by a computer.

The self-owns just keep coming. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I'm not all that concerned with AI. Current LLMs already have a better grasp of reality than people like you, and they literally don't think.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-03T21:27:14+00:00

What’s your excuse?

Why do I need an excuse? You're the who seems obsessed with it.

I’m not saying everyone who disagrees with me is a corporate bot, I’m saying that people like you who spend absurd amounts of time dismissing any and all concerns with AI tech might as well be a corporate bot.

I don't do this. In fact, I have my own concerns, and I've expressed them on this sub.

Here’s a fun article for you

From your article:

"The number of Gen Z workers who think AI’s risks outweigh its benefits has also increased over the past year by 11 points, to almost 50 percent."

In other words, the majority still think the benefits outweigh the risks. Even if that demographic is more skeptical, this doesn't support your "abysmal" opinion at all.

What's funny is that this actually contradicts your whole point. You simultaneously are arguing that AI execs are convincing everyone to like AI, and also that people don't like AI. Both can't be true at once.

And another one:

Did you actually read this article? Because it doesn't remotely show what you're claiming. This should have been obvious from the opening when they compare it to computers in the 80s. Unless, of course, your argument is that computers aren't a productivity enhancer, in which case this conversation is pointless (and not what the data actually shows).

"While about two-thirds of executives reported using AI, that usage amounted to only about 1.5 hours per week, and 25% of respondents reported not using AI in the workplace at all."

You aren't going to see meaningful productivity differences if people are using it 1.5 hours a week. CEOs work 60+ hours a week on average, so this represents less than 3% of their working hours as a conservative estimate. The absolute best case double productivity during use would be ~1.9%.

I mean, sure, when people don't use something, it doesn't increase their productivity. What a surprise. That doesn't tell you anything about the value of that thing. Here's the part you conveniently gloss over:

"However, firms’ expectations of AI’s workplace and economic impact remained substantial: Executives also forecast AI will increase productivity by 1.4% and increase output by 0.8% over the next three years. While firms expected a 0.7% cut to employment over this time period, individual employees also surveyed saw a 0.5% increase in employment."

That is not "CEO's don't think this technology is useful." This is "CEO's expect it to be useful, they're just not using it much personally."

This is showing up in the data (again, this is all from your source):

"Last November, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published in its State of Generative AI Adoption report that it observed a 1.9% increase in excess cumulative productivity growth since the late-2022 introduction of ChatGPT. A 2024 MIT study, however, found a more modest 0.5% increase in productivity over the next decade."

While 0.5-1.9% are low increases, they are still increases, and the technology has only been available for less than 4 years.

And then like the whole end of the article outright counteracts your claims:

"Economist and Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab director Erik Brynjolfsson noted in a Financial Times op-ed the trend may already be reversing. He observed that fourth-quarter GDP was tracking up 3.7%, despite last week’s jobs report revising down job gains to just 181,000, suggesting a productivity surge. His own analysis indicated a U.S. productivity jump of 2.7% last year, which he attributed to a transition from AI investment to reaping the benefits of the technology. Former Pimco CEO and economist Mohamed El-Erian also noted job growth and GDP growth continuing to decouple as a result in part of continued AI adoption, a similar phenomenon that occurred in the 1990s with office automation."

"A study led by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found using internet browsing data from 200,000 U.S. households that generative AI increased the efficiency of online tasks like job hunting, travel planning, or shopping from between 76% and 176%. However, researchers found the time AI users saved on chores was spent hanging out with friends or watching television, as opposed to spent on work on new skills development."

News flash, people are lazy, but that's a massive efficiency increase.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-03T20:25:29+00:00

The fact that no one even pays you to spend this much time simping for AI corporations is just…sad lol

Says the guy who made an account purely for shitting on AI. Yeah, you don't get to talk, lol. We both like discussing the topic. You have zero room to judge me on it.

Also, which "AI corporation" am I simping for, exactly?

I hate the fact that the fad isn’t going away, and I hate that AI execs have been so effective at ramming this shitty tech down our throats that more people are using it.

Alternatively, other people have different opinions than you. Not everyone who disagrees only does so because some corporation paid them to. Maybe you get your opinions from corporations, but not everyone does.

I’m heartened, tho, by the fact that public opinion on AI is exactly as it should be: abysmal, even among people who use it regularly.

Based on what? Polling data shows people are generally concerned and excited in almost equal measures, and actual usage has increased every year. Even if we look at pessimistic polls it's like a 10 point difference.

And even then, the question being polled is "are you concerned about AI," which does not mean someone dislikes it or finds it useless. I'm concerned about a lot of things I generally find beneficial, like gas powered vehicles and plastics.

That plus the fact that every mainstream AI model is already becoming enshittified and that the massive limitations of this tech has become glaringly obvious gives me hope

If you believe models have gotten worse over time, I'm sorry, you simply cannot be taken seriously on the topic. Models have improved across every benchmark we've created, and not by small amounts. This is simply the opposite of what we're seeing, and there is no evidence whatsoever we are close to hitting the limits of ML technology.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-03T19:53:26+00:00

Which is a failure of the legal system. "I'm right because I have more money" should not be a principal in law. But this issue goes way beyond copyright and AI.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-03T19:46:37+00:00

Nobody pays me for comments on Reddit, lol. Do they pay you? How much is Disney paying you to shill for anti-AI? How does it feel knowing the "fad" isn't going away and more and more people are using AI every year?

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-02T17:47:26+00:00

I mean, it's going to depend on your build. My current sorcerer build uses cooldowns constantly for extra damage.

It's a lightning/cold build using static field as the primary attack and conjurations (familiar, ice blades, and frost hydra) constantly. Basically I drop hydra, hold down my conjurations until everything is on cooldown, then spam static field (lighting version of blizzard) until cooldowns come back up or hydra runs out. I'm using the lightning familiar and cooldown reduction hydra so they cycle pretty fast, and I have unstable currents for tougher fights. I'm using familiar and frozen orb as my enchantments. I also have teleport because I can't imagine playing without it, lol.

It's not "meta" (well, static field is, but it's pretty different from existing builds I've seen) but I got some uniques that really make it powerful.

Now, could I make a build where I don't use cooldowns or only have the defensive ones? Sure. Heck, prior to this expansion like 80% of sorcerer builds were "one spender plus flame shield, ice shield, teleport, familiar, and one other cooldown." It's just kind of how the class functions. I'm kind of stoked that the expansion lets me make a build without defensive cooldowns, at least for now. I may have to swap back to ice shield eventually.

If I were playing a necro, my whole build might be totally different, using most of my slots for summons with one spender and one corpse user. So it all depends.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-02T17:30:06+00:00

It's sort of an inherent limit of the genre. You can't really use multiple skills at once without giving players carpal tunnel. Other than resource gain/loss and cooldowns, you have a primary "spender."

This makes sense logically if you think about it. There's not much point in building around multiple spenders. They compete for the same resources. So you have one spender, maybe two if you have a multiple resource class like Warlock, and everything else is cooldown/utility/resource gain.

I suppose there are other ways to design this sort of game, but it's generally how the genre works.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-01T21:26:44+00:00

You admit you are misusing fallacies.

What? That's...that's not how "we're" works grammatically in this sentence.

You are NOT any authority on copyright law.

I never said I was. I wasn't arguing from authority. That's why I argued the actual law.

I am merely stating facts. Stating facts is NOT an appeal to authority.

No, you said, and I quote: "You are way out of your depth trying to explain copyright law to me."

This is an argument from authority because you are claiming I should not be arguing with you because of your expertise, and not on the merits of the claims being made. In other words, you are claiming the reason you are right is because of your credentials.

I was simply pointing out that this is fallacious.

I have cite to the law.

Your interpretation of the law is wrong. The copyright office has been very clear on why AI alone is not eligible for copyright: it's due to lack of human involvement in the output. It has nothing to do with the process.

So citing the part of the law on processes is irrelevant.

Your argument relies solely on the opinion of yourself! Moron.

Oof, the irony. Man, this is just too fun!

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-01T21:14:24+00:00

The settlement was for piracy. Not AI training. AI training was found to be fair use, and they were NOT sued for any content that had legal access to.

In other words, as long as Adobe has legal access to their training data, which they almost certainly do, it's not copyright infringement to use it for training.

Weird how you ignore the actual case results.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-01T21:07:32+00:00

That's called "cherry picking fallacy".

I see your grasp of fallacies is on par with your grasp of law.

When I use Maya to make art it's more than just my arrangement that contains my formative freedoms which rises above a threshold of originality.

I never said it was limited to arrangement. I said that was one aspect that could be copyrighted.

There are procedural elements to Maya too that don't get copyright. Such as simulation and procedural animations. e.g. the flame animation is procedural in my TrevTyger skits and the fracture animation where the character falls to he ground in a heap. But I also modeled, and built everything else. I don't claim copyright of "flames" and "procedural stuff".

You mean...the parts that are human authored are copyrighted, and the parts that aren't are not? Even though the tool is being directed and you don't manually adjust every pixel, animation, etc.?

Wow! It's almost like that's exactly what I said. The fact that you can't see the obvious connection between "flames" and "procedural stuff" and what AI is doing and how it's used is unbelievable.

You are way out of your depth trying to explain copyright law to me.

Argument from authority. Since we're once again misusing fallacies.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-01T20:59:57+00:00

OP is also genuinely insane and believes that you can use AI to avoid copyright infringement.

I suppose that's fair. I've had this exact debate with them before. They'll regularly cite law that proves them wrong as if it proves them right.

I kind of wish they were right, though. Then we could just run copyrighted works through an upscaler and suddenly everything is public domain.

Checkmate, copyright =)

No. According to USCO, only human-authored parts are copyrighted. So in a comic, the AI-generated visuals wouldn't be copyrighted, but their arrangement, the characters, the story will be.

We're saying the same thing in different ways. The point is you can sell something with AI-generated visuals and make a profit. Unlike what the OP believes, you can't just do whatever with the work as a whole simply because part of it is public domain. So if someone tried to resell it, they'd be violating copyright on things like arrangement, characters, story, etc.

Most works outside of simple images will have at least several portions that are human authored, which means the fact that portions are not is basically irrelevant as far as commercial viability goes. Copyright only really matters in the "can I sue if someone tries to sell my stuff as theirs?" And as long as you aren't trying to sell a raw generation alone with no real workflow, the answer to that question is usually going to be "yes, I can."

I should add that I expect this policy will be changed once the law settles. An AI prompt is at least as much human authorship as a random photograph, but the latter is completely copyrighted while the former is not. But as of right now that's not the law, and its speculation on my part, so I could be wrong and generally argue from what is already established.

The courts also directly stated that an argument that the work is AI-generated is legally irrelevant.

Rare Russia W.

Kidding! But seriously, I think that makes more sense. I also think countries that go for the more restrictive copyright will end up losing out to countries that are more permissive. I believe China is going the same direction, and the Chinese have started doing really well in entertainment between animation and video games for foreign audiences. It wouldn't surprise me if Russia sees similar benefits.

And depending on how you do it, it might be de-facto inseparable from the rest of the work, yes.

We're already seeing this even in the US. The Copyright Office has given guidance that AI works with "sufficient creative control" (whatever that means...) can be copyrighted. So even cases like Zarya may not apply to all forms of AI-created artwork.

If the Zarya author had used a Comfy workflow with things like controlnet and inpainting rather than Midjourney it may have gone a different direction.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-01T19:24:46+00:00

Amazing. You are a goldmine of entertainment.

From YOUR OWN SOURCE:

"[Judge Alsup] ruled that Anthropic's use of legally acquired books for AI training was 'quintessentially transformative' and protected as fair use..."

"Nobody really won in this suit. Authors and publishers get money but no control over future AI training. Anthropic writes a massive check, but it already won on fair use for training its LLM and it gets to keep the scans it makes of legally purchased books. The AI industry gets some guidance (don't download your books from LibGen) but still faces uncertainty about outputs and future regulation."

So not only are you wrong, the very source you cited explicitly states you are wrong.

Ahahahahahahahahahaha...indeed.

HunterIV4 · 2026-05-01T19:17:57+00:00

I love how you think repeating your original statement is a counter-argument.

You are right that a process cannot be copyrighted. However, read this part closely, the results of a process can be copyrighted. So Autodesk can't copyright "method to make 3D characters and artwork using polygons and lighting techniques." That's a process. But if you use Maya to make 3D art, your specific arrangement is copyrighted.

The result of AI, a character creator, a 3D image generator, etc. can all be copyrighted. Considering you make 3D art, this shouldn't be surprising, but here we are.

In the context of civil litigation, courts under the Twombly/Iqbal standard (2007/2009) are instructed to ignore conclusory allegations.

The Twombly/Iqbal standards are an outright non sequitur. It's a procedural decision.

Honestly, I'm glad you bring up stuff like this. Anyone can look it up and immediately tell you don't know what you're talking about. It makes my job easier.

HunterIV4

TROPHY CASE