i'm trying to organize my thoughts on this.
i struggle to have any sympathy for people who use ai for fanwork. i also think these witch hunts are giving people an āethicalā excuse to be mean. i think weāve let consumerism and capitalism infect fandom, and this is the inevitable result. i think the erosion of fandom as a community opened the door for this, but these people made the deliberate choice to step through it. i think the why matters and should be the focus of the conversation, but i also think it's equally important that we don't let the reasons excuse or normalize the actions.
i think the relentless call outs and the immediate memeification of everything, the fics and authors who use ai becoming running mean girl jokes, is only furthering the degradation of fandom, and creates a space that feels unsafe for someone new to create without the crutch of ai. i can empathize with people not being sure how to form connections other than through producing content people will talk about. the root problem is that everyone is hungry for community, but we've lost sight of what that means and how to build it.
i don't think i can find any sympathy for the people who loudly professed to be against AI and used it anyway, or those who doubled down after being called out months ago and wrote treatises about being victimized. that's deliberate deception and manipulation and cannot be excused or enabled.
i'm conflicted, all of my thoughts are contradictory, but i guess that's human. and i guess if i have any clear stance it's that i think the only productive way to approach this issue is as humans capable of nuance and not moral litigators. our focus needs to be on working the problem, not meting out punishment.
blakekathryn
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
gracieabrams
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
