Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

You may have seen a graphic of some techbro proclaiming that "stealing" AI art is totes wrong you guyz going around the Internet. Stephanie Sterling takes the piss out of the graph for today's Jimquisition.

Edited by Resileafs on Mar 11th 2024 at 4:30:13 AM

Their final conclusion doesn't really follow, since it ignores that AI-generated art can't be copyrighted and so legally can't be stolen.

But the graph's maker clearly thinks that it's theft.

I've seen trees more self aware than that hypocritical ass.

Reading a little of the wording of into the graphic, especially the first bit, it may be more a warning for other AI artists to not steal their prompts and not a warning telling people not to right click > save as their AI art.

Prompts can get extremely complex, becoming a series of tags and intricate instructions of how the art should be done. These range from telling the AI to make it a masterpiece to having it be done in a certain style or aesthetic. Hence why it says "prompts can't be made in 10 seconds" or "vocabulary is required".

Edited by Psyga315 on Mar 11th 2024 at 12:34:47 PM

That is definitely not what the graphic is going for. This comes off the back of another AI bro who was "offended" someone reposted their AI art without giving them credit making the rounds before this specific post came out.

Also the banner at the top is literally "BEFORE YOU STEAL AI IMAGES", not like "Before you steal my prompt"

It's clearly about "Don't you dare steal and repost my AI art" and the second part where they get super defensive that "actually using an AI is work too!" and "actually using an AI totally a skill we had to practice and refine too" kinda lays that bare.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 11th 2024 at 3:55:53 PM

”How dare you steal my AI art made out of artwork that was stolen from other artists?! Theft is perfectly OK when I do it!”

- Some techbro, probably.

People don't think of AI art as theft because there's a degree of separation between the person doing the stealing and the thing being stolen.

Same reason people see shoplifting as theft but underpaying workers as just business. The existence of the middleman creates a sense of legitimacy.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 11th 2024 at 1:32:20 AM

AI art is itself theft so you're only stealing from a thief anyways.

but then you're also an a thief!

a double thief if it were

Two wrongs may not make a right, but does it make it extra wrong?

Stef talks about FFVII Rebirth, how strange and quirky and fun and weird it is, and how this is best exemplified by its rehabilitation of Cait Sith, one of Final Fantasy most maligned characters.

Good to hear they're having fun. Its always gratifying to see them enjoying themselves whenever they get the chance.

It's actually impressive how much folks seem to be enjoying Rebirth; even Dunkey, who infamously loathes JRPGs, was pretty forgiving and even outright having fun in his Rebirth video.

It's like videogames are supposed to be fun or something.

Ah shit, I didn't get the memo; I was absolutely hating every second of my as-of-now 60 hour playthrough of the game.

From my understanding of the original Remake a lot of what makes the VII Re series so great is its reverence for the original game, in all its dorky weirdness. Hearing Cait Sith's one of the highlights isn't surprising to me therein- he's always been the embodiment of VII stranger side, so he's the kind of thing Rebith would gleefully embrace if not double down on.

Yeah, when they're not capitalistic cashgrabs that delve into Character Derailment both in cutscenes and in the datalogs.

They're all capitalistic cashgrabs. All that matters is whether they are fun capitalistic cashgrabs.

Edited by M84 on Mar 18th 2024 at 10:41:32 PM

Some are more capitalistic than others COUGHSUICIDESQUADCOUGH

Legitimate work of art ^HEYI made this because I had something to say and I wanted to make this. > Capitalistic cash-grab ^HEYI made this because my company has to make money by selling products so please buy this product. > Obligatory Product ^LISTENMy company has evolved in capitalism to the point that the company itself is the chief commodity that is bought and sold, but we technically need to keep up pretenses so here's some fucking trash I threw together

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 18th 2024 at 9:09:15 AM

I'm currently in the middle of a playthrough and I think the thing that surprises me is how well moments that should be total tonal whiplash somehow work?

Example - I've just beaten the Dyne 1 on 1 fight and the cutscene that followed is really heartbreaking and it's so excellently voice acted. Thing is, immediately following that the party have to fight Palmer, the goofiest and most incompetent member of Shinra who does an attack called "Neener, Neener" where he taunts the party.

Things like that shouldn't work, yet they somehow do. I think it's because the game is so totally ready to be both incredibly sincere and vulnerable while simultaneously being funny to the point of being absurd and the absolute most at all times. It's just really refreshing to see after the Compilation tended towards the self serious at times.

I suspect part 3 will be darker, given the original disc 2 has a lot of serious plot developments. But I'm glad Rebirth is what it is - it feels simultaneously like a love letter to 7 and, as Stephanie says, a send up of its funnier aspects. They could have easily tried to remove those bits since it was easier to sell them with the toonier graphics, but they leant into it instead. It feels like a game that just wants to show the player a good time, all the time, then hit them with a steel chair of emotion at regular intervals.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is filled with a ridiculous pile of microtransactions to nickel and dime players by doing such things as making fast travel prohibitively expensive if you don't buy the items to use that mechanic in the shop.

This is one of those situations where they know immediately what it means when people go "Well I know what Stephanie Sterling will talk about monday".

Edited by Resileafs on Mar 25th 2024 at 11:53:30 AM

Steph is slightly wrong about one thing

The Ferrystones arent for sale in the microtransactions. It's the portcrystal (the beacon you teleport to which can be dropped anywhere and re-used).

You do get those in game as various quest rewards, you can't buy them in game at a shop. Not that it excuses anything (And the ferrystones in game are insanely expensive yes), and having 1 more (or early access to) a port crystal is super handy.

Honestly the worst part of fast travel for me is that there's those chairlift you can use to cross the game's 2nd country. And if a Gryphon spawns he'll destroy the chair lift, insta killing your entire party. You can defend. You can't avoid it. You're just fucked if it happens.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 25th 2024 at 12:52:41 PM

"Prohibitively expensive" is a hell of an exaggeration; sure, 10k per Ferrystone sounds like a lot in the early game, but you literally get drowned in gold not even 5 hours in. Hell, I've bought a house for 20k, spent a bunch on weapons and armor, and I still have 80k lying around with like 15 ferrystones already in my inventory and storage and I'm not even 10 hours into the game.

And there's the fact that as mentioned, you can't even buy your way into having 10 portcrystals right off the bat, which is what's needed to be able to use the ferrystones at all; you can only buy one portcrystal with real money.

I get being pissed off about MTX, but making gross exaggerations and spewing outright blatant misinformation isn't going to help anyone's case here.