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NSFW AI-art project Unstable Diffusion has been axed by Kickstarter, despite already hitting their funding goal. This one isn't too suprising, as KS doesnt allow NSFW and a DIY pornomaker probably was never gonna slip by that filter even if it didn't ship with visible nipples.
Kickstarter took it a step further, however, formally amending their ToS and affirming that "Kickstarter must, and will always be, on the side of creative work and the humans behind that work."
It now appears that Unstable Diffusion is being driven off Patreon too, who dont have a no-NSFW excuse. Almost certain to follow the same pattern, at this point; there are too many established artists on that platform who are willing to boycott.
The twitterati taking responsibility for the bannings are targetting payment processor Stripe next. Seems like a textbook swarm governance action.
Ks:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unstablediffusion/unstable-diffusion-unrestricted-ai-art-powered-by-the-crowd/community
Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/unstablediffusion
Current fallback:
https://equilibriumai.com/index.html
Surely they must know this is impossible? This won't even buy them years.
They don't. And they may be correct.
Most artists (though not all) are bafflingly ignorant about the workings of generative models, despite hundreds of peoples' good-faith efforts to explain the situation to them in increasingly simple words and accessible illustrations. They recognize AI as an existential threat, and seem to have a purely conflict-theoretical understanding of the situation, to the extent that they just don't care about the truth and intend to gaslight everyone involved, chiefly the voters and the regulators, into accepting the narrative most convenient to them («neural networks are evil big business corporate tools to make pedophilic collages out of stolen copyrighted art») and regulating the very technology out of existence, in the same manner they use when canceling things (including AI) on web platforms and in various communities.
I suspect they have a shot at winning this. After all, generic wokeism can also be described as intellectually vacuous, yet here we are. Trans activists don't have a good case against kiwifarms, yet they've managed to drive it off the internet – now where are all those who were saying it's impossible and sensibly chuckled at doomers like myself? Any comments?
Don't underestimate the power of skin in the game, networking and pestering authorities at scale.
I know it changes by the day and I take your point as to the precarious nature of so much of the centralized risk on the internet but kiwi farms is once again back on the internet. Wokism is indeed powerful and these people are using the same strategy as wokeness, in many cases these are the same people, but this isn't really the kind of thing that is weak to that strategy. Maybe, and a big maybe, they can hamper google and western based research but they can't stop China who would jump at the chance to have a leg up on the US in this field. There just isn't any way.
Alas, if China and crypto is any indication, they will not allow anything that could potentially allow someone with insufficient faith in the Party to make a neural-blend of Esteemed President Xi Jinping with the Hated Honey-Eating Disney Bear. If anything, I expect the Chinese government to be even more vulnerable to its country's artisans lobbying against AI.
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