Digital artists and illustrators are abandoning Elon Musk’s blogging platform X (formerly Twitter) over the introduction of a new controversial image-editing feature powered by artificial intelligence (AI). According to reports, the creators claimed that the new tool could be used to modify others’ works without their consent.
One such popular creator championing the boycott is Mu-jik Park, the renowned South Korean artist known by the pen name Boichi. Boichi is the creator of the hit manga series Dr Stone and Sun-Ken Rock.
Ugh, I’m so tired of this. I never had twitter in the first place, but I did used to have Instagram and I loved it for all the artists I’d follow on there. But I dropped that a year or two ago (officially deleted my accounts 😤) and just stuck with Tumblr ever since. But so many of my favorite former fanartists just REFUSE to let either service go, despite them very openly stating their new AI policies or worsening ToS policies.
I know Bluesky will turn out the same way as the others, but I’ve been trying to encourage artists to move to BS and use bridgy fed so I can still see them on Mastodon. Like you’d literally get the visibility of TWO platforms by using bridgy fed rather than sticking with just Insta or just Twitter. And yes, Instagram and Twitter have bigger numbers than BS or the Fediverse, but one day the AI issues will grow too big and you’ll lose those numbers anyway when you leave the platform. Plus how many of those numbers are bots anyway?
But it just sucks man. I only have Tumblr and the occasional visit to Pixiv as my source of fanart. Mastodon and Pixelfed are just lacking, or make it very hard to find the artists I’m looking for (and I literally joined Pixelfed.art!). I’ve tried following hashtags but it’s a little dry…
Absolute facts. Also it’s one thing when it’s fanartists which just do that as a past time, but actual artists should have a dedicated team and it really shouldn’t be hard to crosspost on multiple platforms, should it…?
It’s just free visibility that they’re ignoring, definitely a huge head scratcher.
now thats some rich ass gatekeeping. AcTuAL arTISts sHOuld have dedicateD TeaMs? Get a clue drawers, painters, guitar players, singers, sculptors, etc. etc. who DON’T have a dedicated team to run your socials.
“Actual artists” as opposed to “fanartists”, in the sense of “people who are under contract and are hired to do art as a job”.
Of course I’m not saying people who don’t have a team aren’t “real artists”, it was just a way to differentiate fanartists from people like Boichi, I didn’t mean to sound gatekeeping.
Fair enough but still - Actual artists are not always under contract and hired to do art as a job. Many many amazing artists get little or no compensation for their efforts.
I know, I just couldn’t find a better term to distinguish the two. I’m sorry if that sounded diminishing to them, it was definitely not my intention.