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Dear Joker Out,

We are a collective of fans composed of non-artists, artists, writers, singers, and many more. First, we would like to make our intentions clear: we are not trying to spread hate (“don’t count on us for the game of hatred”) but rather address the recent usage of generative AI (GenAI) by Joker Out.

Joker Out has openly used generative AI in their Karneval announcement video to add the balloons onto it. Additionally, there have been increasing concerns regarding the use of GenAI for the design of the poster. These are prompted by the lack of designer tag and details that resemble AI “art”, for instance, colour glitches and mistakes. Fans tried to address this situation since it wasn’t the first time Joker Out had shared AI-generated content—though the times they had shared were made by their fans. Joker Out hasn’t spoken on the issue or stated their position on AI usage since.

The band has now released a new cartoon series, which fans were quick to notice was credited to a person who doesn’t usually post content in that art style, nor has much content in general online, even though it seems somewhat polished. We trust the designer to have done their work, though the admission through a reply in Instagram comments of background and character inspiration done with AI does raise suspicion on the overall originality of the material, also because of other signs of possible generative AI. The reply has been deleted since, but this person has generated AI backgrounds in most of their posted videos, and with their lack of public portfolio, many fans concluded that GenAI was used in creating the cartoon.  

The visual artists among us pointed out the following inconsistencies, which might have gone unnoticed by people who are not regularly involved in the creation of visual art:  the sloppy coloring of the characters' mouths, some of the background’s inconsistent coloring, and pixel outlines that look inconsistent and unintentional. 

In good faith, we can believe that the collaboration with this artist may have occurred without this knowledge and led to Joker Out denying that the video was made with AI. 

The band has, in the past, said they wouldn’t mess with AI:

“I honestly doubt that any of us actually uses artificial intelligence. I maybe used it when I had to translate something, but nowadays it’s already, as far as I know, if you just type some text in Google Translate, AI translates it for you. But that’s it, as far as that’s concerned. I think we all avoid it a little bit because we don’t really understand it, nor do we want to really, so it doesn’t take over our lives, and mostly so it doesn’t take over our artistic creation.” (JokerOutSubs x RADIOaktivno collab: Joker Out – Souvenir Pop)

And while people are allowed to change their opinions, it’s also important to take into consideration the consequences of using generative AI.

Generative AI is different from the AI we had seen for most of the Internet’s history—It’s not the same as the AI Google uses to show websites with the words you searched for, or the same as the algorithms that operate social media. According to the University of Illinois, “AI is used in predictive analytics, natural language processing, and autonomous systems. Generative AI is used to generate information.” OpenAI’s business model (the owners of ChatGPT) is based on GenAI. It reads information from a variety of sources and it provides an answer to the prompt: text, image, sound, you name it. Even if the information is factually wrong, or there is no information available online about the topic in the end, ChatGPT will still give an answer and even make up sources for it. GenAI is not only a tool for spreading misinformation, but also doesn’t obey the laws of copyright, since it takes data from various websites without consent from the creators and profits from it.

Big studios like Disney and Universal are currently suing Midjourney, another GenAI company, because of how GenAI operates. Every piece that’s generated by AI is based on a style that existed before. For example, if you ask GenAI to create a piece in the same art style as Van Gogh, it would be able to recreate something that’s somehow similar to the style he developed throughout his whole life. The majority of data used by GenAI is not of dead artists' works, but of living artists. Every time an “artwork” is created with AI, there is at least one artist who is being stolen from. If GenAI has been used at all while creating the cartoon, art has been stolen from artists who spent a long time developing their craft and get no credit.

The same applies to music. What if someone were to generate music that purposely copied Joker Out’s style and profited from it? Doesn’t that seem unfair? Joker Out spent nine years developing a personal style for someone to just type a few words and sell it as their own. You know it’s possible to do it without GenAI—without feeding this broken system, without disregarding copyright laws.

Joker Out has worked with fan artists in the past to make the Šta Bih Ja music video and the cover of Everybody’s Waiting, and the fans loved it and connected to it! It felt like there was a real connection between the band and its fans—a bond to create something together.

Though we understand the band doesn’t always have to work with fan artists, the usage of GenAI as an alternative to hiring an artist helps this connection be weakened. Instead of this bond between the band and the fans, these recent instances of GenAI use have some people in the community starting to feel like the connection is fizzling out.

As mentioned in the beginning, our mission with this letter isn’t to hate on the band, but rather to share genuine criticism in hopes that it can be heard. We don’t blame you for messing up. No one is perfect, and neither are we. We don’t expect Joker Out to be aware of everything that’s problematic or isn’t, but lately it seems that the band is just not putting as much passion into these projects because of the concerns we raised. There’s also the question of whether the emails written on the OpenStage—which are supposed to be a personal message from the band to the fans and have always been met with so much excitement for that exact reason—were also written with the help of AI, due to the recent shift in language, tone, and formatting. 

Joker Out has listened to their fans in the past and given them a platform to share their creations and speak out. As fans who wish the best for the band, we wanted to voice our concerns about the consequences of the usage of GenAI and how damaging it can be. We hope that you will take our concerns into consideration and that, when you hire people to create art for you, you might rather pick someone who creates art out of passion rather than using an AI model that has stolen its style from other artists. If Joker Out still wishes to use AI in their projects, at the very least, we wish for transparency when it’s used. Right now, we feel the need to approach any new post with caution because we don’t know if AI has been used or not.

We love this community we have all created together—band and fans—and we only wish for it to flourish and continue to feel like the warm and welcoming space it is now, rather than to be tainted by mistrust.

Sincerely,

[list of people here]