The X Situation..

What's up, guys? Welcome. This video is going to be a bit of a rant, so if that's what you're here for, please sit down and make yourself comfortable. Now, I'm somebody who has used X, formerly known as Twitter, for a very long time. I've shared my work there ever since the very start of my art career. That's like 5 years ago. But unfortunately, my faith in this platform and the future of this platform just keeps deteriorating with each passing day. And here's why. There's been a lot of protests from artists recently about one specific feature that's new to this platform. Here's an example. Boichi has announced that he will officially stop posting his anime and manga illustrations on X due to newly implemented features. Now, you might be asking, what are these features that he's talking about? Well, here it is. Isn't that lovely? They've straight up added a new feature and anyone can just edit your image you posted using Genai. So far, it seems like there's no way of turning it off. And they added this on Christmas Eve. What a gift to the world. My god. And under this post, the OP replied, "For AI bros, if they come here, I'm not your papa or your mama. not here to tell you how to live your life and what not to do. I know technology is here. The issue is not that. I think we deserve to have a choice to turn it off. It's totally fair that someone doesn't want their work to be used by others, especially by trolls who have anger management issues. Yeah. So, yeah. Crazy. And of course, case in point, the trolls were summoned, not going to lie, funny AF. With an edited image of the original artist's work, funny AF, in quotes, posts something not at all funny AF. Now, I've posted my work online for the past 5 years, and I've kind of just come to accept the fact that there's always going to be bad actors of some sort who are going to use your work in ways that you didn't intend it to be used, and who are going to infringe potentially on your rights. That is just an unavoidable part of being a creative. But for the most part, people do know what is good practice and what is bad practice. When an artist says that they don't want their work to be used without permission or altered in any way, usually most people, civilized people, respect that. Sure, you might not get arrested for it, but most people know not to cross that line. But unfortunately, this button here kind of represents just a blatant overstep of all of that. It's essentially saying, "Hey, here's a thing that you can do in very bad taste, and you can now do it in just one click. Amazing. I I love it. Oh, Elon, you shouldn't have." Now, I'm coming at this from an artist's perspective, but of course, this issue doesn't just apply to us. This person's got the right idea. Twitter implemented a new update that everyone can edit any uploaded image through AI. For your own safety, I repeat, do not share your IRL pictures on Twitter and make sure you erase all of them while still in time. Now, I think anybody with half a working brain can come to the same conclusion. But when you give this AIed image button to a bunch of anonymous users on a platform like X, some going to go down. People are going to use it for the worst purposes possible. Did they assume the ex users were just going to use this feature to edit people out of the backgrounds of their family photos? Like seriously, brother, were you guys born yesterday? Here's a great take that I 100% agree with, and you're going to see it's been proven later in this video. This doesn't just put artists at risk. It puts every Twitter user at risk. Anyone can use AI to edit images of real people posted on this platform. Again, why is this enabled by default without any consent of the people who shared those images? Could not have said it better myself, bro. Where's the choice? I mean, look at Pinterest. They were flooded with AI images. People complain. And what did they do? They gave us a choice to turn off potentially AI generated images. Now, is that a perfect system? No, it's not. It still needs some tweaks, but that's a great step in the right direction. That's a platform offering its users choice. when the choice is either you post on this platform or you just leave. That's not really a choice because a lot of artists and other creatives like photographers, they depend on this platform for their livelihoods. You know, some people are not on three different platforms. Some people just built up their following on this one platform. Now, a very common argument that I've seen in favor of this is people are going to download your work and feed it to AI anyways. So, there's no use complaining about this one feature because it was already happening. But that doesn't make any sense to me because no matter what you do, there's always going to be bad actors. Yes. But placing this button here is essentially screaming at the average person telling them, "Hey, it's okay to do this." Now, you, the average Joe who's on the Xplatform, can do it at the click of a button instead of having to save this image, go to chat GPT, and generate something for yourself. You'd be very surprised, but just having those extra actions there like saving the image, uploading the image is going to guarantee that a lot of people don't even think about doing something like this. But now it's front and center. It's like, "Hey, click me. You can edit anyone's image you want." Here's a post from Elon himself. And you can see there's an image of a couple, and they're going to type in add two kids in the image. This is amazing. Where could this possibly go wrong, right, Elon? Who would possibly use this for nefarious purposes? Now, a lot of artists are already affected by this. As you can see here, at Groank placed her at an outdoor Met Gala with a labyrinth-like design, including paper-like walls and occasional bronze sculptures. And he brother, seriously, it takes you zero effort to just look at the artwork, appreciate it, and move on. Here's another artist posting his work in progress, and somebody said at Grock, finish the painting. And here's the artist's reaction to that. Honestly, valid. I would have done the exact same thing. There just seems to be a complete disregard and borderline hostility towards artists and creatives on this platform. Implementing an AI edit button like that just tells me you frankly don't give a about anybody on your platform. You really don't. Now, on December 30th, I came across this post which said, "Just look through Grock's media tab and it seems to almost solely be used to undress women." I don't know who discovered this, but a lot of users on X have been using Grock X's AI to specifically undress women, put them in bikinis, turning them around so they can see booty cheeks. Again, guys, anonymous platform filled with god knows what kind of people. Who would have imagined this would have happened, right? Just insane behavior. Look at this post. Add Grock, put her in a bikini and make her 9 months pregnant. What? This trend is one of the most disgusting things I've seen in some time, man. Everyone doing this should be banned. But Elon Twitter seems to allow using AI to undress women and men without their consent. Here's the image in my friend cosplay. And of course, someone had to comment at Grock. Put her in the bikini. Seriously, brother, are we out of our minds? I think maybe the never put your kids images online was probably correct. Look at this. I can't even show you this full image, but hey, Grock, make it a full body pick with a bikini while she has her tongue out and is covered in Holy Christ, man. This is just beyond disturbing. Like imagine you post a nice family picture of you on vacation with your parents and random, strange, deranged, perverted people can now just take that image and do whatever the hell they want with it. We started this video talking about art, but this goes way beyond that seriously. In what world is this cool? In my critique videos, what do we always say? Consent is important. Okay, you get someone's consent before you edit their work. This is the opposite of that. Complete opposite. Why is nobody talking about how ethically sickening and dystopian it is that Grock is able to do all this with zero repercussions? Literally zero repercussions so far. Now, here's an even more disturbing thought. I just looked through Grock's media tab and saw someone AI generate a child to wear a mini bikini. Now, if you don't believe that, here's an example. Why the do you want to see this? Now, you might be thinking, okay, we got to make enough noise so that all of this very disturbing behavior makes its way up to top level management, to Elon himself, so that we can course correct this platform, okay, and not have any more of this BS. Well, it has made its way up to Elon himself, and he responds with this two laughing emojis. So, you literally can't even say this guy's not aware of what's been going on on his platform. Grock can put a bikini on everything, and here's a bikini on a toaster. And Elon says, "Not sure why, but I couldn't stop laughing about this one." I'm not sure why either, bro. Maybe you're stupid. And this is absolutely rampant and it's still happening. Here's someone who's posting an image. Very nice image. At Grock, replace her clothes with a black tape bikini. Make her kneel and hold a piece of paper. A paper, of course, containing a very derogatory term. At Grock, put her in a white with gold and diamonds, browns, a long skirt belly dance outfit showing thong and legs. from this angle. Guys, this is pathetic. Okay, to to all the people who are working at X, everyone who green lit this, everyone who's complicit in this, this is pathetic. Initially, I thought this was just going to be even more hostility towards artists on this platform. But of course, they managed to take it one step further and now it's hostility towards women. And frankly, I've seen men, too. Men who got undressed by Grock without their consent. That is a thing, too. Now, I know this seems very bleak and this is probably going to piss off a lot of people, but as of the making of this video, there's still a chance that these things could get turned around. Recently, a BBC article has come out talking about how the government is demanding the X deals with the appalling Grock AI deep fakes. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has called on Elon Musk's X to urgently deal with his artificial intelligence chatbot, Grock, being used to create non-consensual sexualized images of women and girls. The BBC has seen multiple examples on X of people asking the bot to digitally undress people to make them appear in bikinis without their consent. Kendall said the situation was absolutely appalling and we cannot and will not allow the proliferation of these degrading images. So they are actively looking into this and this is honestly our only hope regulations because frankly right now ex is just not taking any accountability. So here's a quote from somebody who has been a victim of these degrading AI generated images. She says, "Myself and many other women on X continue to report the inappropriate AI images and videos we are being sent daily, but X continues to reply that there has been no violation of X rules. If these images don't violate X's rules, maybe it's time to change X's rules." Now, I just don't understand what the final goal of all of this is. Like, what are we trying to do here? Do we want to make it so that in the future we cannot trust a single image that we see ever? It's pretty insane that any photo you've ever shared of yourself can now be used and altered in a way that could put you into compromising situations. Not just humiliating situations, but also situations that could get you into real trouble, real legal trouble. Now imagine five years down the line there's a real photo of a real person committing a real crime and they could just blame it on AI and just say this was AI generated and no one will ever be held accountable because as a society we can't trust anything anymore. Is the goal here just to erode all trust from society so that we go from a high trust society into something that barely looks like civilization? Like what's the point? I've never seen a better application of the quote just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I can take a picture of you right now. You watching this video. Yes, you. And I can turn that picture into something very humiliating for you. I absolutely can. But I'm not going to do that. I shouldn't do that. I think any functioning member of society knows that we shouldn't do certain things. So why is this happening on X? Jesus Christ. So for anybody watching this video to the very end, like if you're an artist, I can't be the one to tell you to keep posting or to stop posting on this platform. I don't even know if I'm going to keep posting or stop posting on this platform. I'm going to definitely keep track of it, though. The worst part of all of this is a lot of people have actually built up their entire livelihoods on platforms like X before it went to So, it's not like they can just pick up and leave because that just means they have no other way of making an income. They can no longer feed themselves. A lot of us do this for a living and we really have no choice. I've said this many times before, but if I do have a choice, I would not have X installed on my phone. It just seems like every day it just becomes more of a degenerate app promoting degenerate behavior from a person at the very top who I actually used to respect a lot. But he has just promoted time and time again more and more degenerate behavior that just I can no longer defend any of this. Here's what I'm going to leave you with. Okay, if you're an artist and you're watching this video and you're worried about all of this, do not let stuff like this situation stop you from sharing your work online. But at the same time, do not let anybody stop you from voicing your discontent with the current situation. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm going to voice my discontent. But also, if you're an artist, try to curate your page, whether it be a page on Instagram or on X, to have only your own authentic artworks. Be clear about your process. Be clear about your workflows. Be clear that you are a human artist. You don't indulge in that AI And curate a body of work. doesn't have to be the highest quality work in the world, but just as long as it's authentic and it's you. That's what I try to do on my Instagram page and that's what a lot of artists that I know try to do as well. So that anytime somebody sees a post that you have made, they know that this is AI free. This is humanmade and it's like a little pocket, a tiny island of authenticity in an ocean of slop. That's all we can do. Let's just keep creating. Let's make beautiful things and let's work for ourselves. Let's do this for ourselves, for each other. Don't let this stop you from creating, but also don't let anybody stop you from talking your Anyways guys, that's my rant. End of rant. Go in the comments and let me know what you guys think. This is stupidest situation that I've ever seen, guys.

I'm honestly tired but im gonna keep speaking up ✨ Monthly Tutorials on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/samdoesarts 🫶 Limited Merch and Print Releases: https://samdoesarts.com/ ⭐️ check out my work here: https://www.instagram.com/samdoesarts/ 💫 Gumroad shop: https://gumroad.com/samdoesarts My art book: https://store.3dtotal.com/products/the-art-of-sam-yang