the Ken-Year Chronicle

War against Art-ificial Intelligence

I’ve always watched the Iron Man movies with a keen eye on JARVIS. He was a very sufficient Ai servant of Stark and I thought it would be cool if we had stuff like that in the future. I mean all of Stark’s tech was fictional but seemed close by. We got Alexa and a few other programs but they don’t feel as integrated as JARVIS does to Stark. And maybe people don’t want that? JARVIS is able to purchase Stark a pizza the second he gets hungry but some of y’all freak out that our smartphones are recommending purchases for us based on our conversations. I actually just blank out when I see an ad so I’ve never noticed if this worked. Akinator walked…

So while last year, the big tech craze was that NFT shitness, this year a loud contingent of chat started huge discussions about Artificial Intelligence. If this is your introduction, Ai refers to computer technology (existent since the 1960s) but mostly the technology around memory, replication, adaption, and personality. Memory is actually needed for practically any computer process, at least if you want to them to replicate it or even just keep a log of events. Adaption would be a process where the computer could change its programing based on environmental factors–factors outside of itself. This has to be programmed as well (like making a threshold for the computer to change) but some geniuses have also come up with self-learning computers. At the end though, there is a fear that computers will gain sentience and thus a personality to possibly destroy all of mankind. See Age of Ultron where the Ai villain accesses the Internet for a whole of 5 minutes before wanting total genocide of the human race Maybe we just don’t do the personality part.

No but we have to! What spurred the conversations was the new update of ChatGP-3….it has been updated to version 3.5 but has existed since early COVID Saga. No, you don’t have to catch up with ChatGP 1 or 2 to understand this. But this is basically a computer that will text you back with the best possible questions you could imagine. I heard others saying that this was a huge advancement to whatever we had last year although it is not near peak yet. It’s limits lied in it’s memory only being as recent as January of 2022 and it filters inappropriate questions like which Naruto character has the best ass. Upon its release at the start of the year, I saw positive reception as people loved to talk to it. I wonder how comforting those conversations were during quarantine the way they were acting then. For some people, this advancement only meant to reignite their own fears of impending Ultron-doom.

Some of this fear came from the idea that NEETs would evolve. That is “Not in Education, Employment or Training” aka bum ass hoeless and jobless niggas. It’s a practice kept since ancient times, from Isaac Newton to Diogenes (Sinope). Even monasteries exist so those niggas can relax indoors rather than talk to you. A modern variant is known as the Terminally Online that spit out 5 tweets every hour (or the equivalent on a given site). Now someone who already didn’t have any friends–because of quarantine killing social life–them getting stuck to a texting JARVIS would detriment society further. Of course, there’s already computer dating apps but I did notice a surge of ‘realistic’ JARVIS dating apps after GP3 came out.

What’s maybe worse for the paranoid party in chat was DALL-E. Type in some kind of description and the program spits out an image for you. Art is #Canceled! For sure! Freelancing artists on Twitter were much worried for their income of commissions if talentless people could get a computer to draw for them instead. And the new version was crazy accurate, at least according to the people who fell in love with it. So, by now chat has disintegrated into three different philosophies about Ai; the Paranoid (anti-Ai), Artistic (anti-Ai economically), and Futurists (Pro-Ai).

Besides the obvious Paranoid argument that computers will kill all mankind, the arguments against Ai were:

1. Makes poverty easier to come by for starving artists
2. Takes away the value of work and personality from these pieces
3. Corpos will use it to cover the costs of artists
4. Losers will use it to make their every decision as they trust it to be smarter than them despite being connected to the same internet
5. People will certainly use Ai generated images for nefarious activities

Arguments for Ai tech

1. Corpos are gonna use it anyway so why not the commoners
2. It can make larger projects much cheaper and less intense as the programs can be used to even support artists.
3. It can help losers socialize with friends, crushes, and give general advice to people who may have no better role model
4. In the future, everything’s going to be computers anyways so might as well learn to do this rather than other artistic skills. I’m a ‘image coder’.

So here, we see an extremely puritanical argument against any Ai, as if it would cause the fall of the West. So the Futurists had to cope and reply conservatively with those first three arguments. There was some good to Ai if we use it as a support. The last one though comes from a small section of liberals who welcomed Ultron as a hammer and anvil. With DALL-E or whatever, they’d be ‘coding’ the next porno, manga, and even cinematic animated film. I had heard whispers that some became commissioned artists, received requests, and ‘coded’ these into the program to get the desired image. They were cyborg artists! But it wasn’t too big a group and the other groups didn’t respect them.

For the longest time though, nobody respected arguments for DALL-E either. As advanced as it was, it came with frequent mistakes such as too many fingers for humans or weird body parts in weird places. Boobs would not be just unrealistically big but just cringe to look at. Even at the very starts, it seemed to hardly generate faces. Eventually, the antis got used to recognizing Ai images of celebrities (posted as if they were real) by little tells that I can’t describe cause I didn’t see them. It was just more photoshop to them.

Ai images became more rampent on Twitter than I assume of other sites. Like, even if they were on Tik Tok, nobody said anything. On Twitter, OP would post a dunk from Shaq, someone would point out how orange his fingers are, and then the post kept receiving negative attention for a few hours. Everytime. The most annoying part of this arc was just logging on to Twitter. The bullying was brutal enough that the Futurists had to seeth by mentioning that it was getting better every month. DEVIOUS ACTIVITIES HAPPENED IN THE MEAN TIME.

The Gang Makes Deepfake Porn– Deepfake porn is not new by the roughest estimates and it is a constant production of 4Chan along with other sites. The photoshoppers were then well supported by Ai as they could copy the image of a regular celebrity to the program to it could paste to the porn video with facial reactions and everything. It is actually insane to not only think of this stuff, but to painstakingly create it…and that’s before Ai. Eventually, midtier streamer Brandon “Atrioc” Ewing accidentally reveals that he had deepfake porn. How? It was just in his tabs while he was streaming and his chat spotted it. What’s worse, it was not deepfakes of like Natalie Portman but his own peers; QTCinderalla, Maya Higa, and Pokimane. Bro got blasted off the net by his own chat. Nobody could say anything for him and the entire female cast of streamers grew increasingly worried about their image. Atrioc’s leak was basically proof that any of them that have to stream with their faces (especially to be popular) were vulnerable to getting BLACKED in HD. And the people of chat decided to make that doubly as obvious by sending the images to the women!!! Pandora’s Nuclear Box…days later, Atrioc returns to his court and gives his dying population an apology while his wife cries in the background. Visibly. This is insane. Atrioc decided to tie himself to a crusade in which he would spend however long necessary could to fight against the crafters of such images. Months later, he returned with a report that he had a team of hunters that helped him take down the source websites. 4Chan still remains…

I do point out there’s still definitely deepfake porn of anyone with a face on the Internet. People on 4Chan/b genuinely send each other photos of family members and friends for masturbation. Imagine not having laws against deepfake. Good luck avoiding Rule 34 everyone 🙂 .

The biggest fear was that corporations would absolutely abuse Ai tech since some studios already over rely on CGI. But again, why not common people? They wouldn’t be making that much money for it and the most common people, shitposters, don’t have any moral qualms about Ai memes. So before we saw Post-Covid Ai projects from Hollywood, shitposters everywhere unleashed their rath…

Nothing, Forever– while it started at the end of last year, this Seinfeld parody used an Ai script and images of the Seinfeld characters in an interactive experience for Twitch chat made by Mismatch Media. The formula for the show was for the parody Jerry Seinfeld–aptly named Larry Feinberg–to start with a stand-up comedy routine like in the original show. Based on chat’s responses then the rest of the episode would react with other characters appearing or just more stand-up. Because of this process, there was hardly overarching ideas of a single episode and you were lucky if one scene was consistent with the previous. Added with the eerie background music and awkward silences instead of punlines, this created a simulation of literally nothing for forever. In February, at the height of popularity, Larry got the show canceled by Twitch. He said, “Oh no, no don’t make me happy” as his last words leading some to realize that Jerry was suffering within the program. There’s also a theory that Twitch suspended it because Larry had nearly muttered some gay/homophobic joke but he never really finished it either. Season 2 started next month with new original characters and a changed format. It continues to this day with the studio wanting to continue to improve on it’s surreal nature. I haven not heard much since and I know nothing of the fandom.

And then their was the medium of sound which we have not touched yet. Now, people have used Google’s (or others) text to speech for anonymous internet posting for years. There were even some people who have recorded and programmed a famous person, like Ben Shapiro, to make their voice say silly things. And it had to be distinct voices like Ben’s because that’s funnier. Eventually, new versions of Ai voice programs came to be of use to shitposters who found they could use any celebrity. This included making the voices sing to have them cover a song. Someone could be genuinely telling you they like the ‘Jschlatt’ cover of a song and it was Ai! Surprisingly, I think the music industry did nothing about this as you can find 100s of Ai covers on Youtube. By the way, this is the best one. The add-ons they put into the song and their voices honestly make it better than the original. Shut up, I’m a hater.

US Presidents Play Minecraft– as winter was fading away, shitposters realized the funniest possible celebrities were the three US Presidents that zoomers could even recall; Barack “Drone Fighting” Obama, Donald J “MAGA” Trump, and “Sleepy” Joseph Biden. And it was grand. Memes aren’t always just for laughs but are just entertainment and it was cute seeing the tiktoks of the presidents playing Minecraft, Fortnite, or UNO together. The funniest would be the gun type games as they just argued over strategy together based on ‘personalization’ of the presidents. Trump was haughty, stupid, and super egotistical. Biden was senile but wise, and still yet on his own page. Obama was self interested, peacemaker when the other two argued, and cool headed as he spat quips. At the time, one could’ve analyzed the different characterizations posters leaned into with their own clips. Some would make Trump more likable or Biden…or Obama. Few would make Obama completely unlikable. Some had bits between the three and one good one for Biden was to have him lost and annoying in a different game as if he was Roronoa Zoro. Another favored bit was to have Trump ranting at the other two for being annoying or super dumb. Some creators added others characters like George W “Driving” Bush and Bill “Sugondeez” Clinton but I never once saw anyone go further back than that. For Bush, he would be portrayed as aloof but friendly, a bit arrogant. Clinton was just the sexy guy with stupid lines I think. A lot of jokes ended up being roasts like Trump calling Obama a child killing addict. While these are presidents, creators were carefully to not show politically leaning as they wanted to make fun of all the presidents since each had sinned. Even then, sometimes they would just be wholesome and have casual conversations over a meal. Those, that had no more gimmick than being a slice-of-life, were honestly somewhat eerie cause like, why would I be watching this if its not real? So, soon, by the time summer was approaching, the hype died. People still posted stuff like the Presidents going on Family Feud or a theme park but it was not the hegemonic meme anymore. Historians should look to those memes though, to see what Zoomers would’ve said about the traits of those Presidents and the chemistry between them. Political Parody has literally never been better.

Biden was the most meme, being the sitting president: https://www.tiktok.com/@jaded_than_a_ho/photo/7198659644372602158

There was a few objective problems with Ai besides these philosophical arguments. Firstly, racism needed to be constantly patched out of the programs. Mostly, this was in text, where if you ask a fairly specific prompt, something racist would be slipped in. Secondly, the Ai draws from the Internet and an outdated version at that. This means that when I ask it for information about the current One Piece arc, it tells me it literally doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Also, as time wanes, there is more ai content that ai is pulling from rather than humane information. This is known as Cannibalistic Generation. Thirdly was the legality of Ai content featuring the Presidents or other public celebrities. It would seem the stupidest people can get fooled that Biden really said this about weed and others worried that when the adults caught on, there would indeed be trouble. Well it seems like the offline adults never caught on but our authorities around the world do need to find a law that legalizes these shitposts but illegalizes actual identity theft via Ai. Especially to prevent Ai porn of streamers and real celebrities, that shits really fucking creepy.

As the year wanned, another problem spawned on Google images. Searching just about any subject on images or even for articles will result in ai prompted material that someone else already did. This is quite an unfortunate result of a hundred monkeys typing across a hundred keyboards which would prompt ai image with so many ideas, it replaced everything on Google images. This along with general internet bloat has caused some surfers to complain that Google is not useful anymore and instead, it’s much easier to find an answer on reddit. I do not actually face this problem in my research for all the episodes of this chronicle so I MIGHT be goated.

So throughout the year, the medium of written work, voice work, and artwork continued to be incrementally improved on as openai and others improved their programs. Kids would start using the text Ai to start and finish homework, rizzlers picked up new strategies on how to spit game, new covers were made hourly, and eventually people stopped whining about Ai art on Twitter. Slowly, the conversation moved forward that Ai could absoltuely be servile in human media rather than us depending on it. So Disney went ahead and admitted they used Ai in Secret Invasion and Loki Season 2 much to negative feedback. Huh? Well, also, unfortunately dogshit content would gain a new moniker. If a creator, like many in the future, needed to apologize, chat would discredit the apology by calling it Ai generated. Or if it was a bad photo, a bad production from a studio, or bad lyrics in a song. ‘Ai generated, Ai generated” they cried at someone who may be genuinely dogshit at creating something. Being on Fraud Watch is so much harsher these days…