#ai generators

I keep getting asked which AI companion site is actually worth it, so I'm just going to put my thoughts down once and link people here. Short version, after trying a bunch of them, SweetDream over at sweetdream.ai is the one I tell my friends about without hesitating.

Let me run through why. First, the personalization goes deep, you design your companion's appearance, voice, personality and history instead of settling for someone generic. Second, the conversations feel natural and warm and she remembers context, so it never resets back to that awkward stranger phase. Third, the photos and videos she generates are honestly some of the best I've seen, consistent and detailed.

BLEEEEEE PLEASE READ!! IMPORTANT MESSAGE BLOEAUAUUUU

do i have your attention? i hope i do, because generative AI is killing our environment and i want to talk about it as well as encourage you to do your own research as well.

yes, my family and friends are fine. you + your family and friends may also be fine right now, but there are many people of whom are going without power and immediate water. tons of people are having to stock up on gallon jugs just to take baths or have a drink.

all because of AI and its effects on the environment.

the machines used to support things like ChatGPT, C.AI, image/video generators, heat up to dangerously warm temperatures— which means that the warehouses they’re in have to be placed locations that have lots of power/energy to run fans, or places with lots of water to pour over the machines.

the amount of power needed to train AI models also demands high quantities of electricity that emit carbon dioxide and pressure on the electric grid.

i’m going to focus mostly on AI chatbots, as that is where most of my knowledge lays.

a whole bottle to a gallon jug of water is used to generate just one message from an AI chatbot.

i’ve seen bots averaging thousands or millions of chats with, as far as i know, hundreds or more messages just in one conversation.

that’s hundreds, thousands, millions of gallons of water a day. imagine the sheer impact that will have on the earth and future generations if we let it continue.

here are some references/articles about this, i heavily encourage you to read them and find more yourself.

i understand if you have an addiction to AI, i’ve been there before myself.

if you use AI to roleplay, i recommend substituting it with - roleplay servers on discord, roleplay forums on places like toyhouse or spacehey, or even roleplay games on roblox

if you use AI to vent, i recommend substituting it with - asking close friends or family or partners if you can talk, messaging/calling a help hotline, journaling your feelings, or drawing if you can/like to.

if you use image generation to make art or animation, i highly recommend taking online or even in person lessons on art. there are so many ways to be creative and make something meaningful or random/silly. there’s all sorts of tutorials online, and you can always ask people for help with tips. you can draw or animate digitally, do traditional art, use clay and make models, you could even use recyclable items to make a sculpture or craft.

yes, your art will be bad at first. it might be very shitty, it might be that way for a long while— but the longer you do it the better you will get. as time goes on you’ll be more and more confident in doing things without AI, no matter what it is you’re deciding not to use AI for.

your dependency on AI and it’s tools doesn’t have to be forever. it doesn’t have to be that far into the future. i promise you, there are much better options than AI. you can absolutely go without it.

extra solution for both using chat bots for roleplay and venting, you can write fanfics. it’s not at all uncommon to use fiction to cope or pass time, just as long as the process doesn’t involve AI. using things like picrew, gacha life, or any dress up games, are also just as good.

I have been talking (to my immediate environment) about the importance of data privacy for at least ten years. I have been explaining to people that their bank and their internet providers are logging basically all of their activities into datasets and selling them off to whoever pays for it. but very few people cared! I have had people tell me that they just don't care that their cellphone company is making money off of making a list of who they call and how often.

I suspected that the entire process of making art with generators can't be just "write a description in a box and get a sick picture" because some of these tutorials are over an *hour* long. and while the process is based on that, there's also a lot of image editing, converting and moving files between programs, and in general just a lot of software tinkering. generator-assisted processes are creative processes, even if the author is never drawing, nor animating.

and that's kind of the point of this post: the people using generators don't want to draw. what they want is to learn how to use and tinker with several software programs.

So this publicity shot becomes "The image shows a young woman standing in front of a large wooden wheel. She is wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and a white skirt with colorful embroidery on it. She has shoulder-length brown hair and is smiling at the camera. The background appears to be an old, dilapidated room with wooden beams and a stone wall. The woman is leaning against the wheel with one hand and is posing with the other hand on her hip."

I do struggle with emails. writing a polite email takes more effort out of me than spitting out code for my lab. you don't get to decide that writing emails is categorically a bottom-of-the-barrel easy task, and therefore struggling with that means that you're useless and skill-less.

like, do I have to point out the ableism of the thing? I feel like a lot of people who are normally mindful about ableism have happily jumped onto this joke to shit on ai generators, but regardless of how justified criticism of generators is, the butt of that joke are still the people who need machines to do stuff for them. the joke only works if you accept that struggling with tasks that abled people consider easy is a pathetic state, a weakness deserving of mockery.

this doesn't meant that generators are fundamental for us (I'm personally doing ok with email templates), but writing superfluous emails is probably the most logical use case for text generators, and if someone notices they struggle with that task, it's neither weird nor pathetic to use them for that.