Digital artists and illustrators are abandoning Elon Musk’s blogging platform X (formerly Twitter) over the introduction of a new controversial image-editing feature powered by artificial intelligence (AI). According to reports, the creators claimed that the new tool could be used to modify others’ works without their consent.
One such popular creator championing the boycott is Mu-jik Park, the renowned South Korean artist known by the pen name Boichi. Boichi is the creator of the hit manga series Dr Stone and Sun-Ken Rock.
leaving x or insta at this point means youre very… very late to the party.
Debian cut ties in January, so if you quit after that, you’re officially slower to change than Debian.
That’s one of the rarest and finest insults I’ve ever seen
Ugh, I’m so tired of this. I never had twitter in the first place, but I did used to have Instagram and I loved it for all the artists I’d follow on there. But I dropped that a year or two ago (officially deleted my accounts 😤) and just stuck with Tumblr ever since. But so many of my favorite former fanartists just REFUSE to let either service go, despite them very openly stating their new AI policies or worsening ToS policies.
I know Bluesky will turn out the same way as the others, but I’ve been trying to encourage artists to move to BS and use bridgy fed so I can still see them on Mastodon. Like you’d literally get the visibility of TWO platforms by using bridgy fed rather than sticking with just Insta or just Twitter. And yes, Instagram and Twitter have bigger numbers than BS or the Fediverse, but one day the AI issues will grow too big and you’ll lose those numbers anyway when you leave the platform. Plus how many of those numbers are bots anyway?
But it just sucks man. I only have Tumblr and the occasional visit to Pixiv as my source of fanart. Mastodon and Pixelfed are just lacking, or make it very hard to find the artists I’m looking for (and I literally joined Pixelfed.art!). I’ve tried following hashtags but it’s a little dry…
Absolute facts. Also it’s one thing when it’s fanartists which just do that as a past time, but actual artists should have a dedicated team and it really shouldn’t be hard to crosspost on multiple platforms, should it…?
It’s just free visibility that they’re ignoring, definitely a huge head scratcher.
actual artists should have a dedicated team
now thats some rich ass gatekeeping. AcTuAL arTISts sHOuld have dedicateD TeaMs? Get a clue drawers, painters, guitar players, singers, sculptors, etc. etc. who DON’T have a dedicated team to run your socials.
“Actual artists” as opposed to “fanartists”, in the sense of “people who are under contract and are hired to do art as a job”.
Of course I’m not saying people who don’t have a team aren’t “real artists”, it was just a way to differentiate fanartists from people like Boichi, I didn’t mean to sound gatekeeping.
Fair enough but still - Actual artists are not always under contract and hired to do art as a job. Many many amazing artists get little or no compensation for their efforts.
I know, I just couldn’t find a better term to distinguish the two. I’m sorry if that sounded diminishing to them, it was definitely not my intention.
If the platform formerly known as Twitter didn’t die when it killed itself, it ain’t going to die from this. Zombie Twitter will live on.
Ehh… it’s one of the biggest platforms in Japan, and if it starts pissing off that fanbase it’s not a good look. Definitely won’t “die” either, but it might be a considerable hit (and hopefully boost for the Fediverse, or at least Bluesky).
“The Nazis were inconvenient, but the use of GenAI that you find everywhere else is a bridge too far!!”
Yeah, I’m not going to defend training AI with copyrighted works… But I’m not going to waste energy siding with anyone who was okay with X. If you stayed in X, you’vr made your own bed. Now don’t cry because the owner is an AI-pandering nazi, we all knew that already.
Generally in Japan they don’t see much of Elon’s “prowesses”, so I can kinda understand why artists like him might not have caught wind of the Nazi direction the platform has taken until it actually hit them.
And yes, Ignorantia non excusat, but it’s still something, at least.
Japanese here. They do know.
They choose to ignore.
Precisely because they sympathize.I’m not saying every Japanese person still on there is unaware of that, but the general coverage is MUCH smaller than what you get if you’re in English-speaking spaces.
I also heavily doubt someone of korean origins like Boichi is a Sanseito supporter, but that’s just my guess.
Sure. But the other artists in the article are English🌐 users.
Japan is addicted to their SNS anyways.
The ones in the US barely have any excuse, I agree, but it’s better to leave it late than never. Then eventually when Instagram enshittifies under that aspect too they’ll find another platform (hopefully on the fediverse).
For anyone wondering, “Ignorantia non excusat” is Latin, and it means “I speak Latin, and you don’t. Suck my balls.”
In our world of people dismissing any issue that isn’t their own, nothing matters, and only the worst people win.
If people didn’t leave before this, this or that group getting pissed off won’t be the death of it then either.
We don’t need everyone to care about everything, but the current paradigm of not only apathy, but actively fighting against other peoples causes because they aren’t your own has really doomed us.
I’m not necessarily saying this is the case for these artists, but the sad truth is the current society is perfectly engineered to make the average worker as apathetic as possible.
You work 8 hours a day not counting commute and meals, which means you’re left with very little free time, and you’re really tired on top of that. Plenty of people choose to spend that time doing things that actually make them happy or relaxed, instead of looking at the state of the world and being even more sad because of learned (or sometimes even actual) helplessness.
Of course, it would be better if they didn’t, but can you really blame them when the system is stacked against us?
(Obviously the whole situation applies to the apathetic/apolitical ones, the “actively fighting against other peoples causes because they aren’t your own” bunch can go fuck themselves)
Of course, it would be better if they didn’t, but can you really blame them when the system is stacked against us?
Yes, specifically when they use even a tiny bit of that little free time to beat down others who actually try, or when they don’t pay attention to the only ways they could possibly lessen the awful situation.
That’s what I said right after
(Obviously the whole situation applies to the apathetic/apolitical ones, the “actively fighting against other peoples causes because they aren’t your own” bunch can go fuck themselves)
new tool could be used to modify others’ works without their consent.
This specific part is kinda stupid.
Nothing was ever preventing anyone from modifying an artists work. Its incredibly common. No one needs consent to modify anything.
To distrubute something that isn’t yours that doesn’t fall under fair use, absolutely. But modifying without consent is a joke.
I think all the uproar is about new Grok functions that allow you to edit with AI and repost (aka distribute) images directly from within Xitter (I’m not sure that this is the case but I’m definitely not going to log in that thing to verify that).
It always bothered me how so many Twitter users in Japan just kept using Xitter after everything Musk has done to it, like they’re not even aware. I think the language barrier has been filtering some of it out until now.
But,
I am not afraid of AI; I believe in its future and potential. However, I cannot accept my work being used, learned from, or exploited without my consent.
Boichi, that’s what’s been happening with AI to everybody’s art this entire time!
“OH, WELL NOW YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR!!!”
- “Artists” who have been willingly playing in the unapologetic hate clubhouse for years after the owner nazi saluted twice at the American nazi party rally 2.0
Articles titled like this and always crap
Yeah, unfortunately this was the best article I could find in English, better than nothing I guess.
Yes, unfortunately Boichi is leaving… for Instagram.
But hopefully this is at least a wake-up call for some artists that they should really consider leaving for platforms with “less malicious intentions”. Maybe one day someone as big as him will decide to go fediverse, we can only hope.
Swapping one boot for another…
Where are they leaving/going to?
Fuck those Nazi supporters. If they were still on X, they deserve to be forgotten.
Unfortunately, the two “big names” I know of (Boichi and Kei Urana) are both going to Instagram.
EDIT: it seems at least Kei Urana is on Bluesky too
Sigh
Thanks; Linking for context https://bsky.app/profile/kei-urana.bsky.social
Looks like Boichi is there (now) too https://bsky.app/profile/boichibetoon.bsky.social
Oh, good to know, thanks!
Some are moving to Bluesky. After this happened Bluesky experienced a surge in registrations according to https://bskycheck.com/stats.php
https://s3nd.pics/ has a strong focus on artists.
Haven’t heard of that one, but I migrated to Bluesky after the whole “two sieg heils in a row on live television” thing
S3nd is more of an imgur replacement, but the devs are very anti nazi and have been vocal about it after imgur started posting ICE ads. Bluesky is a solid choice as well.
