Non-artists: please gently let your well-intentioned niche blogger friends know that generating an AI illustration for their posts is not a harmless novelty. There are so many sources for free, eye-pleasing, not-environmentally-rapacious images. Creative Commons licenses, public domain art history. - ThreadSky

dylanmeconis.bsky.social • 139 days ago

Non-artists: please gently let your well-intentioned niche blogger friends know that generating an AI illustration for their posts is not a harmless novelty. There are so many sources for free, eye-pleasing, not-environmentally-rapacious images. Creative Commons licenses, public domain art history.

Comments

davidorlo.bsky.social•139 days ago

Looks like the delightful Public Domain Review is not on Bluesky so far, but they are online

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-concealed-erotic-paintings-of-sommonte-19th-century/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3lvDUL_W6Xgt3mlpaH4L-yI87quWAp3Fr0ZUgtGQToLE0NG08-3zIDKj0_aem_5R62j-YsVen-0P6P_mcwWw

mzipser.bsky.social•139 days ago

Damn Right!

ravenfell.bsky.social•84 days ago

Unfortunately, a lot of the stock sites are chock full of AI too. Some of them you can choose not to see AI or they are labelled, but some folks might not notice immediately.

rincefire.bsky.social•83 days ago

Also goes for small businesses, party organizers and so on

bakeitso.bsky.social•139 days ago

I write blog posts for a fabulous small website, and in a recent post we vowed to our readers that we would never post AI-generated images or other AI-created content. I wish more places would do this.

manxinwales.bsky.social•83 days ago

I really struggled with this as I needed some non-spectacular but quite specific images e.g. Tudor man holding an iPad. Wasn't sure about AI, had a go, it was all shit! I'll just figure out how to do it in MS Paint as some dodgy collage! Will look better!

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•83 days ago

Depending on what you’re needing it for, there are also plenty of artists who would gladly accept barter to render this! I have drawn stuff in exchange for: homemade snacks, rare Battlestar Galactica merchandise, a book blurb, free copies of the resulting publication, hand knits, pet photos…

manxinwales.bsky.social•83 days ago

I'm always dubious of this approach as a musician as it kind of has a bit of 'exposure' about it. If it was a pal, then yeah, but I wouldn't expect a professional to work for anything but money.

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•83 days ago

I wouldn’t drop into a stranger’s messages and ask for it that way, but it’s not inherently disrespectful to put out there as an option. Personally — as a professional! — an exchange of goods or in-kind services for a personal commission or not-for-profit cause CAN be a better deal than cash.

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•83 days ago

At any rate, I would always rather have the chance to negotiate a price that works for everybody than be preemptively written off as unaffordable and replaced with an AI image.

manxinwales.bsky.social•83 days ago

And that makes sense. The issue with being paid in 'exposure' was a pre AI issue and probably more problematic for performers. I probably need to adjust my thinking now artists could be 'replaced' (they can't, but you know what I mean).

sarkat.bsky.social•64 days ago

If your blog is monetized in any way, wouldn’t that count ass commercial use?

fidelioscabinet.bsky.social•83 days ago

Everything the US government holds, including the Smithsonian & other museums.

jleto.bsky.social•139 days ago

And if you’re doing anything remotely interesting don’t underestimate the value of an “amateurish” piece of art. That’s what I use for my very much blogging images. Self-created or open license work.

lucahjinooc.bsky.social•83 days ago

Literal art theft is better than using AI imo. Although they shouldn't do that either

meikahidenori.bsky.social•139 days ago

Or alternatively learn to draw. It's not that difficult a skill to learn.

gameboardgames.bsky.social•84 days ago

Not for everyone! I can't draw a stickman

meikahidenori.bsky.social•84 days ago

Actually drawing is as easy as learning to ride a bike or drive a car. Anyone can do it. You just need paper and a pencil, that's it. There's actually zero barriers to learning it beyond your own lack of self confidence or desire to practice.

abysmalzydrate.bsky.social•64 days ago

I always suggest drawabox to people who are too overwhelmed to start. you don't even need the fancy pens they try to sell you. a plain ol bic ballpoint pen is just fine.

meikahidenori.bsky.social•64 days ago

Because I live in Australia & most everyone I talk to in here isn't, I can't give recommendations for equipment (as access is very different) but there used to be Sketch box & Scrawlbox are great subscription boxes to help give you ideas each month with the very basic tools for those ideas.

meikahidenori.bsky.social•64 days ago

But like, you can go into any $2 shop & get paper & pens. Like I've drawn on serviettes in restaurants & used to draw on all the scrap paper my Grandad used to print out for the bowls club with text all over them on both sides. 🤣 good tools are great to have but learning with cheap is good practice

xenderman.bsky.social•64 days ago

I've never been able to follow up with drawabox. My brain just doesn't work with it well

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•83 days ago

So many people say that, but I have yet to find anybody was able to move a drawing tool who doesn’t produce some absolutely delightful stuff when given permission and inspiration. Professional, technically complicated art is not the only real art. It’s not even the majority of art.

xenderman.bsky.social•82 days ago

Easy is NOT the word that you should use when describing learning how to draw, but you CAN learn how to draw if you want to.

meikahidenori.bsky.social•82 days ago

It is very easy to learn how to draw. Again, just like riding a bike or driving a car it's a skill that takes a little bit of time. You don't need to be making masterpieces when you set out to create. Reality is finshed works take more than one version of it before you get a final peice.

meikahidenori.bsky.social•82 days ago

Seeing only finished works online gives you a false perspective & idea on making art. The truth is alot of the stuff you do will be rough as guts & that's ok. What matters is you put an idea of your own down.

meikahidenori.bsky.social•82 days ago

I have two kids who love to draw. My youngest for AGES was afraid to show anyone her drawings because they weren't like her sisters. I told her that's ok as mine aren't like her sisters either. I don't keep my nicest art either (i give it away) so I have all my working sketches & books around-

neenernina.bsky.social•83 days ago

Art is a 100% learnable skill!

newneck.bsky.social•138 days ago

📌

legowerewolf.net•138 days ago

Wikimedia Commons is a fantastic resource. Not *everything* on there is CC or public domain, but the license information is right there on the file page and fairly readable.

raevi10.bsky.social•83 days ago

or-crazy thought- just asking someone permission to use something with credit

a lot of artists when asked are totally chill

asgardianviking.bsky.social•84 days ago

Splash or pexels offer free stock photos for example

realmaryagnes.bsky.social•64 days ago

Every image at Wikimedia Commons is free to use/public domain, etc.
(And they have over 112 MILLION images 😯!)
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

snark150.bsky.social•29 days ago

There even is a free alternative to Yoda. https://bsky.app/profile/snark150.bsky.social/post/3lgn7nf4amc23

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•139 days ago

Folks need to hear it from peers who aren’t visual art creators, who run the risk of seeming shrill or defensive or making it too much of a “you hurt my feelings” thing rather than a simple PSA. We’re all catching up to this stuff!

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•139 days ago

I do believe AI has, or can have, a useful and responsible role in some essential industries. But when it comes to creative imagery used for promoting your own individual expression, it’s the equivalent of showing up to a holiday cookie exchange with a 100 calorie gas station baggie of Chips Ahoy.

lemurdank.bsky.social•64 days ago

AI as a whole has a bunch of uses but vitally those uses are background processes that make existing systems functional or much better, all generative AI stuff is the pipe dream of some tech exec whos mouth wrote a cheque they're all finding out they cant cash

pinkiepower.bsky.social•139 days ago

Nah, Chips Ahoy are at least reasonable chocolate chip cookies.

This is showing up to a bake sale with a bag of potato chips.

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•139 days ago

(Here to belatedly add that a great percentage of visual creators, when asked politely if you may use an existing image of theirs in a blog post with a linked credit, will say yes with enthusiasm! We’re not Smaug jealously guarding our art hoards, we just don’t like being counterfeited by companies)

rystefn.bsky.social•138 days ago

Can confirm. So far, my success rate in directly asking artists, musicians, models, etc. if I can use their stuff with attribution in non-commercial enterprises is 100%. In general, people are happy to see that other people are enjoying their work and want to spread it around.

williamwconnors.bsky.social•84 days ago

I've been known to provide artwork, even for commercial covers, at no charge because people were kind human beings and I liked the way their project sounded. Fun is fun, you know?

zorgle.art•139 days ago

I'm helping my 10-year old design a game. She was concerned about not drawing well enough. I let her know that her efforts are infinitely more excellent and valuable than anything generated.
She also asked an artist friend for tips and some assistance. Has been great to see her give it a solid try!

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•139 days ago

Heck yeah!! I am WAY more interested in a hand-illustrated game with less polished original art than I am in anything with something that has slapped-on AI assets. There are also loads of free-to-use sprites and such out there gifted to the community by artists!

zorgle.art•139 days ago

Oh we're not even talking digital! I getting her started with *le gasp* a ZINE!

Showing her how to plan out pages and folds and ways to bind and all the delightfully crafty ways to put information on paper.

The game uses regular cards with a guide to their meanings, and she asked if ...

c-ocelot.bsky.social•83 days ago

Or we have an affordable license agreement for such cases or perhaps have work that is under a CC license. All you have to do is ASK US!

lokimt.bsky.social•64 days ago

As a 3d artist, I don't make concept art, and as such I use others concepts. As of now, I haven't met a single concept artist I asked to use their concept that said no (other than sold ownership). As long as it's credited and not commercialised, most people are fine and appreciative of asking.

smartvpants.bsky.social•139 days ago

That you shoplifted

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•139 days ago

Haha YES

smartvpants.bsky.social•139 days ago

And then you poured out a bottled water on the sidewalk for good measure.

glennf.com•139 days ago

There’s multi-faceted argument, too: bad for artists, bad for culture, bad for the environment, and also *bad art that fails to convey what art is intended to*. The sameness of it all has started to shine through.

glennf.com•139 days ago

On a recent ComicLab episode from the NCS, one of the panelists noted a big uptick in requests for *real* artwork because clients were seeing very similar, unreal AI stuff polluting the world, and they felt handcrafted human work would stand out! I loved hearing that.

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•139 days ago

Yeah, along with the sameyness (which, you know, human creators and commissioning audiences can also fall prey to), the killer is AI’s inherent lack of point of view. It feels like a weird reverse variant on pouring your heart out to somebody and then realizing they weren’t listening.

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•139 days ago

Frankly, the processing expense involved in generating AI images is such that I can’t see how this bonanza of free custom generated pics could continue indefinitely, but it WILL pollute image resource pools for a long, long time, and folks should stop unwittingly adding to the stockpile.

glennf.com•139 days ago

It felt faddish from the start and the novelty will wear off when companies and people deploying it find an ever-worse response rate or an ever-more “ick” response. I don’t think this is optimism on my part! It feels like it’s arising naturally and culturally as the uncanny valley opens up!

thesixler.bsky.social•139 days ago

Don’t forget “using ai or sharing ai to show how bad ai is” that’s just using ai and calling it ironic

jvanoyen.bsky.social•84 days ago

https://Europeana.eu has millions of Public Domain images, audio, sound and 3D files for anyone who needs them for creative and research projects! They're from museum & archive collections from across Europe.

Here's a very cute & seasonally relevant example ❄️💖
https://www.europeana.eu/item/916121/S_OLM_photo_OLM_2013_1_1676

kitncaboodle.bsky.social•137 days ago

I get all my cover photos for my history ko-fi posts from Wiki Commons. And every single one ends with a citation to the creator.

pwallinga.bsky.social•139 days ago

Big fan of Unsplash and Pexels, which both have free-with-attribution stock photography that looks really, really good.

tinyweasel.bsky.social•139 days ago

I'm doing a really good Udemy lesson at the moment in programming and the only trash thing about it is he uses all these fucking AI generated pictures. They're freaky and I hate them.

bluemoo.se•139 days ago

I keep seeing this everywhere. I would much rather bloggers use nothing at all if they can't find a good image.

lenaisok.bsky.social•139 days ago

also, it’s really fun to dig into public domain resources to illustrate your blog posts!

nysha.bsky.social•84 days ago

If you're doing generic stuff, you can also go to Pixabay and hide AI generated. It's basically just public domain stock images, videos, sounds, etc. at no cost.

neil-ramsay.com•131 days ago

Any suggestions for decent stock sites that aren't 80% AI-generated these days? We refuse to buy AI stock art on the few occasions we need stock, and it's maddening trying to FIND it now. I often have to cobble something of my own, but I am no visual artist.

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•130 days ago

It’s certainly gotten harder. Usually Getty Images does a great job of having images exhaustively tagged and separated by image creation method, but I haven’t checked in the last few months. I often use Flickr with the Creative Commons search on and do a quick check on the accounts’ other activity.

zacloud.bsky.social•83 days ago

If you check the replies on the main post here again, folks have been contributing several possible resources you can look into. 🙂

neil-ramsay.com•83 days ago

Thanks! I hadn’t seen some of these!

sadderall.bsky.social•84 days ago

📌

zyearth.com•139 days ago

I've pointed that out to several authors and bloggers and they've mostly ignored me... Or blocked me.

There's a particular author with an author help website that has AI everywhere... And she deleted my comments talking about AI. I won't visit her stuff anymore.

lsaraiva.bsky.social•127 days ago

📌

billstewart.bsky.social•139 days ago

If nothing else, do a web image search for stuff that's like what you want and use common tools (Photoshop/Irfanview/meme-generators/evenPowerpoint) to compose the pieces you want, add labels, etc.

thediscoveryofzero.com•83 days ago

Wikimedia commons is great!

vivi.the.enbywit.ch•139 days ago

It's honestly pretty easy to just make a render in blender, even if it's just a bunch of default meshes and text. I made one for a blog post I just posted yesterday and I think it's still a better thumbnail than AI. I also did it in less than 5 minutes, including the render time!

magnoliapearl.bsky.social•139 days ago

The baby music class I take my son to started using AI images in their Instagram posts, and I’ve been mulling over just offering to do drawings for them for free lol

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•139 days ago

Oh barf.

magnoliapearl.bsky.social•139 days ago

YEAH…

steekira.bsky.social•64 days ago

AI damaging the environment is a new thing for me. How does that work? I sort of know how NFTs can be damaging, but I’ve had trouble understanding it.

aliceclough.bsky.social•64 days ago

I think it’s to do with the environmental impact of data storage and transmission. The resources needed to run huge servers include vast amounts of electricity and water plus rare minerals. I’ve also read about the locations of servers being problematic for political and enviro reasons.

steekira.bsky.social•64 days ago

That makes sense. Thank you for the clarification!

spacenerd19.bsky.social•139 days ago

Soooo many YouTubers too. Worse they make it harder to find and block all the purely AI YT content that is flooding the place.

tangocharlie.bsky.social•139 days ago

For anyone poking around in your replies:
I think 500px is a site for finding free-to-use photos (just add credit),
Or I think Flickr lets you filter search results by Creative Commons rights,
Or…

guineverehope.bsky.social•139 days ago

Bookmarking this for later, might want to use it for modding games

theriotnrrd.bsky.social•139 days ago

I use Unsplash; it lets you filter by the license that is applied to the image.

tangocharlie.bsky.social•139 days ago

Whoops, that might have been the one I was thinking of instead of 500px

katebranden.bsky.social•139 days ago

Yeah, I was thinking that wasn’t accurate for 500px. Photogs who use the site can choose to license, but it’s not the default.

tangocharlie.bsky.social•139 days ago

I got muddled!

katebranden.bsky.social•139 days ago

It happens to all of us!

tangocharlie.bsky.social•139 days ago

And honestly? even if you were to screencap someone else’s artwork and use it without credit, it would not use the resources of AI gen, it wouldn’t contribute to the value of AI companies, it wouldn’t pollute the visual atmosphere, AND someone could still reverse-image search it

Uggghh siiigh

davidmalki.com•139 days ago

Even Getty has embed code for putting an image in your blog for free!

tangocharlie.bsky.social•139 days ago

Wow wait, really? Cool.

davidmalki.com•139 days ago

It's been a minute since I've done it but e.g. https://wondermark.com/2018-errata/

tangocharlie.bsky.social•139 days ago

Now I can only think of this, a real monkey’s paw situation.

Artist: “I sure wish people would stop taking the images I post.”
Satan: “Well, have I got a deal for you…”

practicingbushiho.bsky.social•139 days ago

I know this is bleak as fuck but it got a laugh out of me, because wow how true is that!?

menno.bsky.social•139 days ago

(I am hoping this site is ok) I've been using unsplash at my job for years because they're free and high quality.

jeffreyellis.ca•139 days ago

I had a student ask me if they could use AI to generate something they couldn't easily take a photo of themselves, and I was like "have you checked all of unsplash? Flickr? Are you sure no one on earth has taken a photo like this?"

tyrotcm.bsky.social•139 days ago

I think the Smithsonian has a bunch

alierakieron.bsky.social•139 days ago

Wikipedia alone has thousands upon thousands.

ashhiggins.bsky.social•139 days ago

I just scribbled the title in a weird way

samwoolfe.bsky.social•64 days ago

I agree. I'll admit, though, I have used a few AI illustrations for my blog posts, but my preference is always to go with human art or photography. With rare exception (as in the case of the few images I used, out of 100s), I don't vibe with AI art at all and I'm sad about its prevalence on blogs.

manikfoxlaughs.bsky.social•137 days ago

Nope. I'm a blogger and guess what I do? That's right, as an ai artist, I generate I images. Have a good day.

dylanmeconis.bsky.social•136 days ago

What’s an AI artist?

joeauerbach.bsky.social•138 days ago

It's so easy to use creative commons art.

memetix.space•83 days ago

Work is afoot to change this. In October, Adobe added image metadata that allows artists to declare works off-limits to train AI which persists (allegedly) even through screenshots. They will also not train their image model on unlicensed IP or copyrighted images. Rest of the industry should follow!

mcoorlim.com•139 days ago

Pixabay, Unsplash...

I doodle but I'm not an artist, professionally. I would never fucking ever use AI. Not even for funsies. It would be a betrayal of solidarity.

Plus it sucks.

homebrewandhacking.bsky.social•138 days ago

Pixabay is flooded with AI stuff. Nightmare.

mcoorlim.com•138 days ago

I'm annoyed to hear that, but not surprised.

homebrewandhacking.bsky.social•138 days ago

It is, naturally, rarely tagged properly.

mcoorlim.com•138 days ago

Probably intentionally. AI is marketing poison. People hate it.

dakkireads.bsky.social•84 days ago

wikimedia commons (read the license terms to make sure its ok to use them in a commercial project if thats what you're doing)

renee-draws.bsky.social•84 days ago

Everything on Commons can be used commercially for free! But some files have specific requirements for crediting or re-licensing. E.g. public domain images can be used without credit, but CC-BY or CC-BY-SA requires crediting the creator.

eruanion.bsky.social•64 days ago

As someone who often needed royalty free music for videos, or images I didn't have to pay for, I can tell you, they are pretty easy to find. generative AI will never be as good as a human artist

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