There until today had an active Kickstarter campaign running for Unstable diffusiona project that describes itself as “a group born out of grassroots community efforts to reject the restrictive rules of AI companies.”
The campaign, which easily exceeded its original funding goals, said its pitch was:
This will fund the development of open-source, community-first AI models that will realize the dream of one billion people exploring and creating art with nothing but their imaginations. This revolution in human expression will be tantamount to the invention of the printing press or the Internet. AI that makes it possible everyone to make art.
While the Kickstarter campaign uses a lot of very careful language to avoid spelling out its actual intentions, you can read between the lines in phrases like the team lamenting: “The last company to release open-source AI image models has given in to pressure from investors and released a heavily neutered version of their previous model‘ and that their ethics policy states that they ‘plan to exclude all children from our datasets to eliminate the possibility of abuse with our API’.
Basically as TechCrunch report, these guys are frustrated that existing AI generated image models aren’t making good porn, so they want to build a community to help them do their jobs better. Well I’m not here to poop on anyone’s quirks or desires for online content, we’re all adults here and everyone has their own stuff to get into.
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But porn or not, these are still AI generated images, and given the protests that are currently taking place ArtStationand with the broader controversy surrounding the field in general, Unstable diffusion landed at the right time to be the campaign to get Kickstarter to review their own policies on the matter.
The crowdfunding platform has yet to release firm guidelines saying “We sometimes navigate some really tricky and undefined areas,” but the company has released a statement suggesting they will, at least for now.on the side of the creative work and the people behind it”.
Here is that statement in full:
I’d like to share some of our thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI) generated imagery and AI art as it evolves, as many creators on Kickstarter are understandably concerned about its impact on the creative community.
At Kickstarter, we often have projects that are innovative and push the boundaries of what is possible. And that means we sometimes navigate through some really tricky and undefined areas.
In the last few days we have engaged ours community advisory board and we have read your feedback through our team and social media. And one thing is clear: Kickstarter must and always will stand on the side of the creative work and the people behind it. We are here to help creative work succeed.
As we look at what’s happening in the creative ecosystem and on our platform, here are some of the things we consider when considering what place AI imaging software and AI-generated art should have on Kickstarter, if any:
– Does a project copy or mimic an artist’s work? Not only do we need to consider whether a work has a simple claim to copyright, but also assess situations where this isn’t so clear—where images owned or created by others may not be present on a Kickstarter project page, but are in the training data that the AI software used in the project creates without the knowledge, attribution or consent of the creators.
– Does a project exploit a particular community or endanger someone? We need to consider the intent behind projects, sometimes beyond their purpose as stated on our platform. Our rules prohibit projects that encourage discrimination, bigotry, or intolerance against marginalized groups, and we often make decisions to protect the health and integrity of Kickstarter.
This technology is really new and we don’t have all the answers. The decisions we make now may not be the ones we make in the future, so we want this to be an ongoing conversation with all of you. You can share your thoughts by writing to [email protected] as we continue to develop our approach to using AI software and images on our platform.
This statement was published at the same time Unstable diffusion Campaign suspended (with refund of all backers). It’s important to note that while this post is mostly about the general idea of AI-generated imagery, the mentions of damage seem to address specific criticisms Unstable diffusion:
