3w ago

New Soft Rule: Tagging posts as [GenAI] when they contain Generative AI

Hey m@tes, as y'all know, this instance has been anti-corporate GenAI positive since it's creation and as such we've typically allowed such content to be posted freely. However in the last few weeks we've had a bunch of drama from GenAI haters who insist on coming into our comms and starting slap-fights. This caused us to vote on a new rule to have the mandate to clear out this constant friction. This worked to an extent, but I think we can help foster a better community with the larger threadiverse.

One issue a lot of anti-GenAI people keep bringing is that while they can block dedicated comms like !stable_diffusion_art@lemmy.dbzer0.com, they don't have an easy option to avoid GenAI content in random other /0 comms as there's no way to filter it out. This kind of content has been seen to cause a lot of strife, because people complain about its existence, while /0 admins and mods based on the above rule, tend to sanction those complaining. This then causes drama loops with /c/YPTB and /c/FuckAI etc.

There is a good point to be made here that while we don't mind GenAI content in /0, there isn't a reason to not help others avoid it. So we want to institute the following soft rule by now:

Simply tag your posts which consist of primarily GenAI content with the [GenAI] tag in their title. Not only will frontends like Tesseract will natively parse this as a tag and display it accordingly, but people who dislike such content, can simply filter it out of their feeds. Eventually lemmy will add tags which will make this tagging more seamless, but for now a manual tag in the title will suffice.

This rule only applies to posts in non-explicit GenAI comms. The assumption is that people can simply block those comms completely anyway.

As I said, this is a soft rule for now. Soft in the sense that you're not going to be sanctioned for forgetting it, but we hope people will remind you to do so. This is a good-faith attempt by us to co-exist and help others avoid what they don't want to stumble onto, much like [NSFW] tags. So I hope you'll add do a good faith attempt to help us in this. Furthermore, people who come to posts tagged as GenAI explicitly to scold and start slap-fights, will give the admins and easier justification to clean up, since they could have just filtered out that content in the first place.

Cheers

131 comments

That's good I agree with this

Good, AI art fucking sucks.
- I know, those are my favorite use cases 😏
  
  Is AI porn better for the women or does it take away the jobs of context creators?
- Can I ask what compelled you to join db0 after reading the sidebar? Honestly curious. If I hated AI that much, after seeing the tagline, I would have noped out.
  
  As someone who feels similarly about AI art, but joined db0 anyway: I like the other things they got going on and I'm not stupid enough to whine and complain about the one thing I don't like. (I guess, technically this is doing some of that but shut up xD)
  It's like if I went to a bar that has a bunch of games in it, and one is a bunch of pool tables or something and I really hate pool, I'm not gonna throw a fuss demanding they remove it? Some people like it even if I think it's not that cool.
  
  I don't think it was a prominent feature when I joined, AI imagery in general wasn't quite as popular or sophisticated at the time. And even if I disagree with that point, it's not a deal breaker and db0 is still far better than many other instances.
- I like it. That's the thing about art. Some people like it. Some people don't. You don't get to define what is or isn't art for me. I get to define it for me. That's what's so awesome about it.
  Also, get used to it. AI isn't ever ever going away. This is just the beginning. So pace your hate.
  
  It's fine if people like it, it just gives me a gross and uncomfortable feeling when I see it and makes me sad that one of the first careers killed by AI could be illustrators.
- Can't be art with no artist, just 'generated illustration'
- It's pretty funny sometimes though
  
  I accidentally clicked on an AI video of Hank Hill rapping with all the characters from King of the hill and it was fucking hilarious and the song actually kind of slapped in a "bad music good" kind of way.
- So do your opinions.
  
  Well it looks like a majority here agree with my fuckin sucky opinion so that's cool at least

I think this is a good addition. We shouldn't alienate other like-minded people because of slight disagreements in my mind "minor shit" like this, and this seems like the least that can be done.
Also, I believe this post should be tagged with [GenAi] because of the attached image? 😅
- Well, the tag is very much in the title yes ;)
  
  Re-reading it yeah it's in the middle, I'm just conditioned to think the format [TAG]:Title heh

I like gen ai and I think this rule is a nice gesture towards the other side. It's a good practice to cite your sources when you're online anyhow.

FWIW, I approve/agree with this rule.

I was wondering if you guys would catch the latest shitstorm on this. Definitely a necessary precaution. Its a good idea, and I hope it will be enough.
Its getting to the point where people are blanket terming us as unhinged and blocking the whole instance because debates are getting heated. :(
- The anti-ai people are sending death threats and transphobic remarks to mods.
  They really need to step back and reassess their lives.
  
  Its getting heated on both sides from what I've seen floating around. I have to stand more with db0, because the other side just seems to be openly marketing hate-mongering. Which of course is going to bait a rise out of some here. We haven't been going around slandering people who hate AI, but I've seen people going around openly slandering this instance for liking it. That's what happens when you create a community solely based on the hate of a subject. Its just a breeding ground for negative energy.
  I've been on both sides. I'm not really cool with AI stealing art and prose to add onto their repertoire, but I have self-hosted LLMs and enjoy using them locally. There's a place for AI, and unfortunately big corp is pushing an agenda that places AI in a horrible light, so its no wonder people hate it. That doesn't mean that they should create a hate-based community, but hey, that's a part of real freedom.
  On the other side of this coin, we have people here who stoke the flames by pre-banning people from communities they moderate in wild displays of power abuse, or joining in on fuck_ai to openly speak out in a community where they're obviously not wanted and in general just taking a stick to the beehive. I've seen plenty on this side that disregard the rules and beliefs of anarchy, instigate arguments, and flout the premise of one of the ideas that db0 stands against- abuse of power.
  Like I said, I can't blame some of them. Its hard to ignore some of the obvious slander that db0 gets sometimes, but it doesn't mean we should openly validate them by getting hot around the collar about it. We shouldn't take the high road, either. Pretentious high-horsing is just as bad as openly getting angry. Let AI-haters openly bash AI and try to understand that there is a vindicated reason for it. Its not us or even AI itself, its how AI is being marketed and used by big corp. We need to push that we don't believe in that, the same as they don't, without swinging bats at the first hater we come across.
  The best thing db0 can do right now is be respectful. I get it, we're not exactly receiving that same respect sometimes, but stooping down to low levels of disrespect just based on the venom that spits out of an individual's mouth is just not the answer. Whereas I don't think this will get as bad as .ml or hexbear levels of hatred, I really don't want us to be the next in that spotlight.
  Death threats and transphobia are just the cries of the few disgusting extremists. I agree that they need to stop immediately. I tend to dislike anything extremist. Their respective instances should be taking action against those individuals. If they don't, I have no doubts that Lemmy will stand against them as a whole. Transphobia in general isn't and shouldn't be tolerated anywhere, and usually isn't tolerated here at all.
  In the case of those individuals, I just see children throwing a tantrum and trying anything to scare or upset mods. That's when slurs and scare tactics pop their ugly heads out of the grass, and they should be ashamed for just thinking those things, let alone acting on them. But that's not instance vs. instance. That's a handful of people in an instance being angry at a handful of people from another instance. There should be no reason to start a war of many based on the battle of a few.
  So I don't disagree with you, but the context makes all the difference in the world. Its a very complicated and complex situation.
  tl;dr: This whole thing sucks, but at least we're taking steps on our side to solve it.
- I got called an alt of db0 because I explained the instance's stance on Ai.
  
  It's going to take a while to do that now. People are all riled up right now and really should cool off a bit. I know what you mean, though, because this instance's stance on AI is basically my stance on it.
  There are great applications for it, but the government and big corp are pushing it into a disgusting direction, as they do with everything they get their hands on that could give them power or money.
  
  I also got called an alt of db0 because I just said "We have our own rules here, you don't have to interact or make an account here."

Most AI image generators that generate images add EXIF metadata indicating that the image is AI-generated. This helps people who want to identify AI-generated images readily.
In the case of ComfyUI, it even includes the entire workflow --- like, another ComfyUI user can just grab the image, drop it onto their ComfyUI Web UI and they'll be right where the generating user was.
Unfortunately, EXIF metadata can contain location information --- some cameras and such add it --- and this metadata led to people posting images at places like Reddit being doxxed after they didn't realize that they were posting their GPS location and maybe real name, stuff that some cameras attach. As a result, a number of image-hosting places simply strip all metadata, to prevent users from from accidentally leaking this information.
Pict-rs, the software package that Lemmy hosts run to permit image uploads, does this. Unfortunately, it means that those "this is an AI-generated image" tags get stripped off.
So, for example, on my system, with ComfyUI, using ImageMagick:
undefined

$ identify -verbose output/ComfyUI_00312_.png
"Properties:prompt" has a JSON encoding of the workflow.
Sample images generated by various AI image generators are readily-available on civitai.com.
For this generator that generated this image on civitai, it looks like the parameter is "Properties:parameters".
I believe that there are a small number of such tags today.
It would be technically possible to just not have pict-rs strip that particular tag (or tags, if there are multiple that a given generator adds?) off, have a list of "AI-generated tags", then have Lemmy add some visual indicator that an image is AI-generated. I'd suggest that this is probably a better longer-term route to indicate that an image is AI-generated than manually-tagging post titles, for a couple of reasons:
Spiders that index images on the Web will know that the image is AI-generated and can flag that for users and let them use that as a filtering criteria (e.g. Kagi Images permits for this). They aren't going to understand tags in post titles, but the metadata tags are somewhat universal.
Doesn't require manual effort if an image can have some indicator or flair or whatever put on it automatically. And I guarantee that some users are going to get this wrong just by accident, because different instances have different rules. Easier to change how a computer works than to change human behavior across-the-board.
Works on all instances.
The information remains attached to the image even if downloaded.
Works for images that aren't just the subject of single-image posts and don't have an associated title.
Speaking purely for myself, I kind of like the open-source, collaborative aspect of sharing the workflows or prompts, since it helps other users see how an image was created and learn from it; it's something that I'm glad to see the generators include, and I'm kind of sad that we strip it off on the Threadiverse.
- I really appreciate this comment because I didn't know about EXIF metadata for AI-generated images and I think you raise interesting points about long term management of our informational ecosystems
- exif is stripped when uploading to lemmy, I believe

Kudos.
That's it, that's the comment

Imagine getting angry at something this trivial.
- I think it's more "imagine getting mad at people using it at all" because the social effects aren't trivial at all.
  
  The social effects of me generating an image are non-existent.
  The social effects of capitalism are all reaching and exist independently of LLMs.
- I mean...
  I can imagine how artists struggling to make ends meet might be angry that work they'd spent years learning and honing their skills to produce was and is being crawled by tools made by a bunch of silver-spoon-chomping techbros who are marketing their products to businesses who employ artists as a way to employ less artists, and pay peanuts to those they do hire to wrangle prompts and fix AI mistakes instead of actually getting to make art.
  And I can imagine how frustrating it is to see people minimize that struggle when it often benefits oligarchs and C-suite ghouls.
  
  This isn't exactly a capitalist tech-bro instance. So while I agree with there being a problem here, the problem is less genai and more about capitalism IMHO.
  Which is why it can seem a bit silly to me to go after this instance of all things when it comes to genai.
  That said, as always, I think db0's soft rule is a really great good faith effort to be accommodating to others, while staying true to the core of what the instance is about.
  So I hope you'll see that part of things and tone it down in kind.
  
  Fair, but this happens in EVERY profession. Happened with people who sewed clothes, weavers, photographers (once a camera was on every single phone), now coders, etc. Also very few artists made money anyway. People who like to do art for personal and fun reason, still can.
  Source: I used to be a professional artist/graphic artist for a living. I was able to do it for 35 years before I retired last year. It was always a grind, and very few could make it. Even though I was good enough for it to be my only paycheck for most of my career, I still love AI artwork. :)
  World changes. People crying about it and "boycotting" lemmy communities because they don't like it won't change anything at all. Not even a little bit.
  AI isn't going anywhere, regardless of how mad people on Lemmy are about it. Not only that, but a lot of nerdy stuff they do now like vid games, DnD, etc, already incorporate AI and will continue to do so. I still have contacts in the industry, I know what the marketing departments are doing. Lemmy won't even know what is AI and what isn't.
  There are still people here who say "Oh just look at the hands!" Friends, there are lots of ai models that have figured that out.
  Marketing teams aren't using ai that looks ai. Most food photos you see are ai. Most graphics you are seeing on vid game covers and ads are ai. Funiture ads are ai. You are already being duped because you think you "know AI" when you see it. Actually, no you don't. You know BAD ai when you see it. Good ai is something that you don't even realize is ai. And it's already everywhere. lmao
  
  I see your point and agree. It is a shit situation for artists, at least for 90% of them without a distinct art style. Same goes for writers. Same goes for accountants (when the first accounting software was released). Same for …. Anything that has been or will be replaced by technology.
  Additionally, art is not just about the visual output. Art is multi-layered. And I am talking about real art, not just drawings. And those things cannot be replaced by a machine (yet).
- I think of that every single time someone goes off on me on Lemmy. Which is every day! Lemmy def seems to attract people with certain kind of personality trait that means they get obsessed and upset over the tinest things and can't understand context.

As a genAI hater, I appreciate this. I already block the dedicated communities as I see them in /all. This is helpful to filter out more of the outliers if posters cooperate and actually use the tag. (I think alot of genAI zealots get off on trying to see if people will notice their posts are AI.)
- I was wondering why everyone just didn't block the communities. Maybe their Lemmy clients do not have the option. I use Eternity and it works for me.

I think this is a nice gesture but I also think it's way too charitable for the Anti-GenAI people currently complaining. Their issue isn't that they want to avoid it, they want to stamp it out, they want it gone. They're not going to hide posts or keywords, they're going to brigade them. They already brigade and harass explicitly GenAI communities and don't block them. They've harassed me multiple times, told me to die in DMs and even impersonated me for running such communities. Tagging isn't going to help, they're just going to use it to hunt down people who post it and brigade the posts or target the users, because they aren't angry that they are seeing it, they're angry that it exists and they wish to stamp it out, no matter the cost.
In short this is a good solution with good intentions but it assumes a level of good faith that just isn't there. I'd agree with this if the problem was really people just not wanting to see it, but the problem is much deeper. I'm sure that once people start doing it, the goal posts will be moved and they'll just stop using "untagged" as a reason for complaining.
- Their issue isn’t that they want to avoid it, they want to stamp it out, they want it gone
  Exactly this. These sorts of people don't want to co-exist. They want to bully us out of existence.
  and even impersonated me for running such communities.
  Sorry you've had to go through that. I have been through that too (and still have it happen). So I know how frustrating it is. People on Lemmy can be super weird.
  I'm all for OP's solution, but like you, I don't it will solve much because of just how much people like to stir up drama. They won't use those tags to block, they'll use those tags to find and harrass.
- not to downplay these issues, the impersonation is fucked and weird. but i guess trolls gonna troll and whack-a-mole is the only solution...
  idk what else would you have in mind?
  
  I think that the AI friendly nature of our instance needs to be clearly written in our instance sidebar (@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com and @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com can help with that) which would help out since the instance sidebar is visible in all dbzer0 communities which are remote. It should probably also be included in the application prompt as a disclaimer, since I'm seeing a lot of dbzer0 people who signed up and are complaining about AI (guys what the fuck are you doing here on an AI instance if you hate AI).
  Also moderation, moderation is the only real way to deal with the Anti-AI brigading and trolling. Preventative moderation can also be used as well if things get bad enough and/or don't improve.

It's a good idea in spirit but the tags will mostly be used to brigade and not to filter in my opinion. Most apps dont even have the feature if I'm not mistaken.
- If they brigade, we'll handle it
  
  It's been going on for a while now on !lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com. The sidebar even says:
  Our community has bots making regular posts showcasing best content from communities in given categories to help promote them. Each category is assigned to it’s own bot to allow users blocking posts from unwanted categories and tailor the feed for their preferences without the need to block the whole community. Here’s the current list of bot accounts:
  I'm not sure how much clearly marked posts are going to help the problem. I feel like the people browsing through all are targeting the content and won't ever see the sidebar.
- I already raised that concern as well, but I do think it's worth a try. Would be great to dupe the functionality of the NSFW tag for this purpose.
- Yep, I agree with you.

This is a hopefully a happy middle group that stops these stupid fights and makes people focus on bigger things.

What about that mod banning people from ai communities before they could block the community?
- If they don't want to see the AI communities anyway, is that really a problem?
  
  One person said they can't block communities that banned them
- Then people who hate ai should be grateful, because they don't want anything to do with that community anyway. :)
  
  However, it doesn't feel good to have it happen. Especially since db0 is an instance against the abuse of power. You go about your day and see a comment you disagree with. You downvote it. The commenter winds up being a mod somewhere else and bans you from their communities.
  That doesn't seem fair, does it? And using the excuse of "preemptively banning an AI downvote troll" is not a very good one. If they had been banned after they had gone in to just downvote everyone talking about AI in a community, okay. But you shouldn't be able to "Minority Report" people.
  Som of the bans were used as a form of disrespect. You can't tell me some of the bans weren't done just to piss the other person off because they were pissed off, no matter which way you sugar coat it. If you don't like being downvoted, you probably just shouldn't comment or post on any platform with that mechanic.
  I have never even looked into how to see who's downvoted me. I don't want to. That person had an opinion that didn't align with mine. That's it and that's all it should be. The act of viewing and banning who's downvoted who should really only be used when there's an obvious troll in the community who's already mass downvoted everything in the community.
- I don't really see the issue with that, its just a mod doing that, no admins.
  I don't think anyone annoyed about being banned from there wanted to engage with the community properly anyway.

Thank you!

I think it would be good if users could somehow add the tag to a post if the owner forgets to. Tildes.net has this. Although I get that it would need ti be added inti Lemmy.
- You can edit titles in Lemmy. So they can add it afterwards.

IMO the problem is a lack of tags on Lemmy, which are often used as content warnings. With a robust tagging system, people would be able to filter out tags they dislike, such as genAI or politics.

People should do this for stuff they generated with llms too. Realistically English needs evidentials, like tenses that explain the source.
Much unintentional disinformation would be cleared up if people stated the source. E.g. "I remember learning..." "Someone I trust told me..." "I heard an expert say..." "a statistical text generator emitted..." "a random internet comment said..."
- You remember where you learned things? That's remembering like, twice as much stuff! I'm pretty sure my brain is just making up plausible memories to fill in the gaps.
  
  The things I consider myself informed enough to answer questions on.
  
  Wait till you get to be super old like me. The shit my brain makes up aren't even plausible memories!

Ok, so should we tag this post or did y'all draw that pic?
- It's already tagged

Great! proper tagging and content description helps everyone 👏

it seems to be for the better imo

This is what they are gonna call cyborgs born in the year 2100

Good idea

That wasn't very Anarchy of you. /joke

Yeah, that's gonna age reeeal well.

The sanctioning of anti-AI views needs to end! I move that we immediately sanction them!
Sanction is an autoantonym

imo you're giving in to a loud minority that aren't looking for reasonable solutions. They hate ai because of propaganda, and they want it gone. They'll keep pushing for more censorship every time because the genie won't go back in the bottle, but damned if they won't try anyways
- This is not "giving in"
- If we operate on anecdotal rules, I am looking for reasonable solutions and would be happy with this one. If I can filter out stuff I actively dislike, I can live with other people enjoying it behind my back.
- if they want it gone, in what way does just tagging the content give in to this crowd?
  
  It's doing extra work and allowing other people to dictate how we use our space, for people that are going to break the rules anyway.
  !lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com has been running on this philosophy for ten months now. The sidebar even says:
  Our community has bots making regular posts showcasing best content from communities in given categories to help promote them. Each category is assigned to it’s own bot to allow users blocking posts from unwanted categories and tailor the feed for their preferences without the need to block the whole community. Here’s the current list of bot accounts:
  Yet look at all of Best_of_ai_bot's posts. Immediately and heavily downvoted every time. The people doing this won't care, and use the tags to target content.

131 comments