Quitting Art Aside From What I Want To Do For Myself. Ai Has Destroyed Any Market, And I Do Not Want

quitting art aside from what I want to do for myself. ai has destroyed any market, and I do not want to have to be an influencer or internet personality for attention. I sincerely just want to paint whatever I want and live my life with more regular income and less stress. Thanks for the support.

media coverage

here's the best writeups we have so far.

matt's meltdown:

Support Human

26Feb24 Roundup: Matt Mullenweg Teaches a Masterclass on Why We Have Trust & Safety Teams

Last week, Matt Mullenweg made a series of unfortunate and baffling decisions, including some of the most egregious lapses in judgment from

tumblr's AI deals:

404 Media

Tumblr and Wordpress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools

Internal documents obtained by 404 Media show that Tumblr staff compiled users' data as part of a deal with Midjourney and OpenAI.

that second article requires an account, but the full article is on tumblr here.

importantly, the initial data dump for OpenAI included a bunch of content that — on top of all public content between 2014 and 2023 — automattic didn't mean to share, like private posts, posts on suspended or deleted blogs, unanswered or private asks, and posts that are marked NSFW.

automattic got the IDs for these posts after providing them, and requested they be removed. we don't know for sure that they have been.

notably, the article names andrew spittle, the current head of AI. he was my boss's boss's boss's boss (you get the point) before that, and openly says that he doesn't believe in work-life balance, just in doing what the job requires him to do, if that tells you anything.

so caught up with portfolio day that I've forgotten to post plein air april day 1/30! I'll catch up posting over the next few days

Working in perspective, and the class I'm taking has a total course length of 111 hours. this man is too powerful. what powers will I gain from finishing this.

I'm trying to be kind and patient with this statement, but given that it sounds like you've already downloaded everything and our opt-out request will require an honor system that we have to "trust" that you (or whoever you've already sold our data to) will actually delete it, I'm having a hard time finding kind words.

I don't really care about the opt-out. You've already downloaded everything. I know tumblr does literally everything the worst possible way every single time, but for once in god damn history can we do the right thing first. It's too late. I'm leaving. Everyone else is leaving. You fucked everybody. How are we EVER supposed to trust you.

(I'm not speaking to you personally, tumblr staff who posted this. I'm sorry this happened. I know you're trying, but my god. Who can I yell at PLEASE. i dont want to complain to poor staff. Give me the ceos fucking email.)

Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner. 

We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.

To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option. 

For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc. 

Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.

for my fellow silly geese –

go to 'settings' ->

pick the blog ->

toggle, near the very bottom:

if you're tech-illiterate like me I hope you find this helpful