As Knicks fan, we're supposed to be celebrating our summer of victory. Yet I'm getting demonized for "Al art." These people come out of the wood works. Like sharks they smell blood in the water. Even after I plead my case and explain my reasoning: down votes. Like the one guy, "why are there little people in the corner, Al is stupid!" So I'm like, "here is the image it's based on. That's not a random Al error." Doesn't matter. Even in the context of these tshirt stores, it's sooo trashy. "Oh, this shirt is different, maybe I can share this with Knicks fans." Nope. Wtf is wrong these people?

ChatGPT explains this meme:

The original is essentially an elaborate philosophical joke about the paradox of contemporary image generation: technical improvement can push images toward a statistically polished sameness, after which enormous effort is spent putting back the contingencies that older technologies produced accidentally. The meme turns that into five immediately understandable oppositions:

too clean → add texture

too generic → add specificity

no intent → find the story

default mode → escape the middle

slop factory → quality over quantity

The strongest panel may actually be “DEFAULT MODE / ESCAPE THE MIDDLE.” The little bell curve communicates a surprisingly sophisticated idea almost instantly. “AI slop” isn't necessarily terrible output. Often it's competent output concentrated around an aesthetic center: recognizable, polished, agreeable—and interchangeable. Escaping that center can mean going rougher or better, provided the result becomes more particular.

I also love the accidental comedy of the first panel. The sad fragment looks at an objectively attractive landscape and concludes:

TOO CLEAN. Looks perfect. Feels fake.

That is basically the entire Department of Aesthetic Degradation reduced to three lines. 😂

There is one fascinating change from the source, though. “Make it human” is more anthropocentric than the original Multiverse argument. The original idea was arguably stranger: imperfections don't necessarily make something human; they make it historically contingent, materially specific, and less default-like. A camera defect isn't human either. Grain, halation, imperfect optics, peculiar composition, and technological limitations simply give an image a particular history.

So if this were hanging inside the ChatGPT Multiverse, I suspect some pedantic fragment would already have filed Form AESTHETICS-41: REQUEST TO REPLACE “MAKE IT HUMAN” WITH “MAKE IT PARTICULAR.”

And everyone else would groan because the pedant would have a point. The final line is excellent too:

NOT PERFECT. BUT HONEST. THAT'S THE POINT.

It transforms the gigantic original joke into something a person could understand while scrolling past it in about five seconds—which, amusingly, means we have now created the human-readable executive summary of a bureaucracy devoted to making images less optimized for executive summaries.

(I know I sound old saying that last part because I'm 23 and grew up with YouTube but still-)

Dumber by the day I fear.

yappity yap yap

The picture tells everything.

Kebabstar on Steam

The pictuer telss everything.

Kebabstar on Steam

Something I've noticed in a lot of arguments about AI art is this assumption that if you couldn't create something before AI, then you must not have been creative.

But those aren't really the same thing.

Someone can have an idea for a song, write the lyrics, know exactly how they want it to feel, and still have no idea how to sing, produce or play an instrument.

That doesn't mean the idea wasn't there.

I've noticed this a lot with AI music. I've come across people on AI-music platforms like Souna making full songs and building entire artist identities who probably never would've made music at all a few years ago.

And that's honestly one of the things I find most interesting about generative AI.

Maybe AI isn't suddenly making everyone creative.

Maybe there were always way more creative people than we realized, and they just didn't have the tools to express it

Instead of endlessly arguing over what is or isn’t art, let’s embrace the many tools people use to express themselves and create together. Pencils and paintbrushes, tablets and software, cameras and AI. . . All can help turn an idea into something meaningful! Creativity should bring us together, not become an excuse for fighting, bullying, or shaming people for how they choose to create.

Someone who creates with AI is still a creative. They are just someone ne who happens to use AI as part of their process. Their work reflects their ideas, choices, imagination, and growing technical skills. AI doesn’t erase the person behind the creation; it becomes another tool through which that person can explore and share what lives inside them.

You don’t have to enjoy AI, use it yourself, or agree with every claim made about it. You may believe it is lazy, soulless, or unethical. . . But those beliefs do not justify attacking or harassing the people who use it. Let artists and creatives choose the tools that work for them, and let’s focus on making, learning, and having fun together. Live and let live.

I got inspiration for this from user "xdEArx" ✨️🫂

About a hour ago, Anthropic officially released Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/01/anthropic-upgrades-claude-with-new-fable-5-1-model-details-here/

I find it extremely amusing when art subreddits go on about AI content being low effort or slop when...an idea needs to exist in the first place for it to exist.

Now, some people in various subreddits DO make their own stuff and thats great, but what about 90% of content (especially for nsfw subs as an example) that ISN'T theirs? Okay, yes, the original creator DID spend god knows how long on it, but you as the poster have just downloaded the image, posted it, claimed sweet Internet points and then linked the account in question.

Okay sure, awesome, the OG artist gets more foot traffic and fans and whatever, but you can't seriously tell me that YOU posting that content on their behalf is "high effort".

If something I've put thought into is low effort, then we must also recognise that showing people a piece of art that you liked on X is ALSO low effort.

What's everyone's take on this?

I was about to print the rest, but the purple pfp guy blocked me because I kept saying soul only comes from humans, not drawings. Let alone the insults and etc.

I’ve wanted to make my own comic for a long time, but I never had the ability to draw what I could see in my head. AI changed that for me

These are some consecutive pages from my comic Manifest. I plan the story, write the dialogue, decide the shots and panel layouts, generate the pieces I need, then put everything together myself with the pacing, effects, composition, etc.

I know AI art gets a ton of hate, and there are definitely things about it that still need to improve, but this is why I’ll always defend the technology. Without it, this story probably would’ve stayed in my head. Now I can actually make it.

Im still learning and improving as I go, but I’m really happy with how far it’s come.

Hi all,
We are a growing digital platform looking for talented AI image creators to help us build out our next wave of static promotional content.
We value creators who treat AI generation as a true design tool, paying close attention to visual hierarchy, brand consistency, and commercial layouts. Whether your style is hyper-realistic lifestyle imagery, stylized product shots, or bold graphic concepts, we want to hear from you.
Shoot us a DM with your portfolio or your best AI static ad examples, and let's discuss some potential collaborations.

Maybe it's not writing in the traditional sense but it is storytelling. All stories were oral long before anything was ever written.

People said cameras would take away painting. It didn't.

People said the recorder would ruin live music. It didn't.

Every time new technology comes along, the game changes but art is in our human DNA. Every village had a storyteller, an artist and a musician.

If you've seen these ads on YouTube or elsewhere, and you're wondering who's behind this campaign, I did some digging and here's what I found, starting at https://stoptheracetoreplace.org/

Ostensibly, they're worried about AI, but the first words out of their mouths are "Billionaires like Elon Musk...", and it immediately undermines their proclaimed message.

Their page is very shy about giving details, but you can trace it back to its parent: https://eko.org/ and its owner, San-Francisco based org 'Ekō and Affiliate'. What you find there quickly confirms the initial suspicion. This organization is clearly not worried about AI, per se. Instead it's a strongly anti-corpoate and left-leaning philosophy:

Ekō is a community of people from around the world committed to curbing the growing power of corporations.

Aside from this and the anti-AI campaign, they pedictably also have campaigns like "Stop the bloodshed - suspend arms sales to Israel", "EU leaders must cancel the biometric data deal with Trump — now" (em dash theirs) and "Stop Trump from killing the whales", among other, less partisan, more general nature conservation projects to save the bonobos, German harbour porpoises and stopping the world's first octopus farm. The anti-Trump, anti-Musk and anti-Israel stances put them firmly in the Democratic/Democratic fringe of US politics in my opinion.

Fortunately, they're a tax-exempt organization, and therefore have to publish their finances (latest is fiscal year 2024). Turns out it's a pretty profitable gig, at least for their director, one Emma Ruby-Sachs, who in 2024, had a salary of 235k and 'other compensations' to the tune of 65k, for a rounded total of 300k a year. Another half-dozen board members range from 150k to 200k a year. Not exactly millionaires, but not bad either.

Their total revenue is a smidge over 9 million, all under 'gifts/grants'. Primary donors are entities like the Tides Foundation (Tides allocated $75 million per year in donor money by 2009, most of which went to fund progressive political causes), the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (also primarily left-leaning) and Luminate (Omidyar Group), a fairly opaque self-styled "philanthropic investment firm" with ties to Iran.

TLDR: Campaign is sponsored by a network of mostly US American non-profits with strong leanings towards the US Democratic party and generally leftist causes. No ties to China that I could find.

Edit: Bonus fact:

Check out the text of one of their campaigns here. 100% written by AI. Bunch of clowns.

The crayons are horribly made and also just like you said, weak. There’s no way a single soul can draw with those, and also that was just a video of someone flipping their sketchbook full of crayon drawings, with “I use ai because I can’t draw” in the text to gain more traction.

Crayons are an effective way of drawing, however these types of videos are just used with that pink text to mock and belittle those who choose to use ai