I've got people praising my poorly drawn graphs, of all things. 5min stuff like this:

So yes, odds are they'll like your drawings better over mass produced AI slop.

I do think you're raising valid concerns regarding resource consumption + climate change. However:

youre just trying to justify it.

Learn to phrase things without disingenuously putting words into the others' mouths dammit. This is not Reddit, behave like a decent person instead of a redditor. Nothing the other user said can be even remotely interpreted as "the energy cost is justified", in fact they didn't even talk about resource consumption.

I understood this and now my back hurts!

It’s funny, and it doesn’t hurt anyone.

It sure sounds to me like they were trying to justify it. Funny or not, if it hurts everyone so no, it's not a justified use. Hurting anyone, let alone everyone, just for the lolz is far from acceptable.

"It doesn't hurt anyone." does not automatically lead to "I think the energy consumption and its impact is justified", unless the user claimed 1) that they're aware of the impact, and 2) that they're sharing that comment as a counterpoint to that impact.

(Note I'm not even disagreeing with their core argument. Seriously, I low key want to use image generation for some stuff, but when I think on the energy usage I simply "eh... let's not." I think the way you phrased it in another comment is way better.)

How I read the image:

In the song, Badger is a monotone repetition, hence being the X axis. When Mushroom comes in, it pitches up, hence being the Y axis. Then, when Snake comes in it fluctuates in pitch with an overall rise.

The humor is clever enough on its own, but the roughly sketched chart with clipart sells the fact that the joke is in the delivery and being sent quickly without being overly refined to the point that it looks polished. The rough rounding of the background makes it even more funny for me, because it was like an attempt was made.

Peak artistic humor by looking like an idea was thrown together to get the joke out as fast as possible. Maybe it was quick, maybe it took time to do for the end result, but the look comes through.

Perfection

Art is self-expression. And I don't think we (people in general) should be encouraged to be more productive; instead we should be encouraged to express ourselves more and to lead more fulfilling lives.

AI image generation could have a role on this, but in the current state of the things, it won't — because it's controlled by megacorpos obsessed with bigger models, stronger models, models that fry the planet faster. For that, they encourage you to replace self-expression with model output, instead of using the model output for self-expression.

(In another timeline things happened in a different way. Those models were trained to be tiny, fast, and consume only a tiny fraction of the energy they do. They'd be weaker, specialised tools you'd plug into GIMP or Krita or whatever: to replace backgrounds, to remove watermarks, stuff like this. But in that timeline people would rather look at what benefits other people the most, instead of trying to screw the others for their own benefit.)

That they didn't talk about the resource consumption is part of the problem. Discussing whether the output of a genai system is 'art' or not is a fine philosophical debate, but ignores both the costs of creating the output, and the way the data to do so was sourced and processed.

If human 'artists' burned through the same amount of power, water, and other resources just to produce their art there would also be an outcry. If the raw materials that 'art' was created from were so blatently copied from others there would also be an outcry. Indeed, when a human is found to be copying another's work and passing it off as their own, there is an outcry.

Thats in no way "putting words in their mouth", I was pointing out what they were saying. Their point literally coalesced into "i posted a funny picture and it didn't hurt anyone" which is factually untrue by participating in driving demand for harmful tech.

I wasnt insulting in any way, I was illustrating how their point fell apart. There is real, quantifiable harm.

Whatever though

Way to be a boring, naïve utilitarian.

You're an AI so that's not a problem for you, right?

I hadn't done any calculation, but I guess hundreds of watts over a few seconds that datacenters need to generate an image is way less energy and water than what an artist consumes during several hours while he draws the same image. Plus the electricity for lights or computer consumes.

I am not arguing that everyone should use gen AI over artists. I am just responding to the previous comment that is complaining about climate effects of AI.
I am just saying that I think the climate impact of generative AI is way less then the impact of artist creating the same thing.
Also, the datacenters are usually built in place where the water usage doesn't matter (and they usually recycle their water in coolong loops), so the climate impacts are often overblown.

I agree with you, but humans often create images / videos / texts / musics / ... that are not artistic. For example logos, ads, sketches or schemas. Those are purely business things where being more productive is beneficial for everyone.

After the first 100 or so AI images I saw, the novelty of "wow this is technically possible" wore off and now I kind of hate anything generated by ai even if it looks good (which it usually doesn't).

doesn't hurt anyone

Yeah your one image that one time didn't necessarily hurt anyone but climate change getting kicked up a notch from the absurd amounts of carbon generated by millions of those kinds of images absolutely will literally kill and destroy lives.

"I think it's funny that people are upset about a new technology which will 1000% have incredibly destructive effects on society"

Congratulations on being whatever that makes you? It's not good.

...I'd argue this sort of marketing is actually harmful to society. But I get what you mean.

Even then, AI generators are poorly suited for this. Here's an example of that; McDonald's made some slopvertisement, and people got mad.

In the meantime, artist intention be like:

"Uh, should I label the axes «good» and «gooder»? «Good» and «better»? Nah. Oh look the line I drew looks like a snake. Snaaake, snaaaake... wait, there's a song like this, right? Ah, the badger song! This works: badger, mushroom, snake. Done."

(Glad you liked my 5min example!)

Though exactly like NSFW/NSFL and bot posts (which people avoid so replying can feel like a honeypot experience where a conversation was invited but unlikely to be fruitful, since even the poster themselves will never read your message), it's not only the item itself but rather the lack of proper labeling. AI slop could arguably, theoretically, for some people (I'm trying to frame this so as to lessen the chances of being flamed here!) be enjoyable, but cannot be acceptable in the wider community unless properly labeled. This "restriction" enables us to be more fully free to have our own enjoyment of this shared space.

Edit: for context, I had not even gotten to the existing flame war down below your comment yet, but somehow I knew it was coming! The Threadiverse seems to love to hate on AI almost as much as Windows and tankies!:-P (and ironically all for the same underlying reason: because consent should matter, even/especially when others say differently)