2024 in review

I mostly write on LinkedIn. I crunched the numbers. Here is what attracted most attention.

Yes, I should be switching to the Fediverse. We all should. But for now, it’s still here and LinkedIn. Yes, they have disastrous data collection and AI promotion policies. But it’s a reasonably adult place, and it does what it says on the tin: professional networking. I met so many interesting people there in 2024. Fought some, joked some, learnt a lot, made some good friends, clients, and comrades in arms.

I gave the LI blog function a quick spin last year and decided it didn’t fill a meaningful gap inbetween this place (which I’ll switch out for Ghost eventually — don’t worry, you won’t notice) and their generous 3000 character post length.

Since I want to reserve this place for a bit meatier stuff, the bulk of my writing ended up over there. Some of it deserves its own posts here eventually, but that will stay on the backburner for a while yet.

So without further ado, here is what got the most views, comments and reactions.

#10: This person does exist

I work a lot on exposing content remixers as being just that, and to highlight issues around data sourcing.

Who remembers thispersondoesnotexist.com? A StyleGAN trained on 70,000 CC licensed photos by an Nvidia researcher and released as a viral website back in 2019 to raise a red flag ahead of the deepfake flood.

And who remembers thispersonexists.net? And the subsequent paper (ArXiv) that matched faces to the original dataset as a cautionary tale for what to put online, what licenses to attach, and indeed for over relying on outputs being "original".”

#9: Stop Ai Phihbia

The AI art wars produced some masterclass trolling that was good for a laugh.

#8: Breakthepencil

I took this first one at face value:

Prompt writer toxicity reaches new levels lately. Calls by anonymous mobs for “paint pigs” and “artcels” to “adapt or die” have been core to the movement since the very beginning. Stability let up their official Discord for organizing harassment campaigns from the start, and CivitAI happily published plagiarism models of rights advocates before moving into actively funding scrape&train raids, all the while hiding behind the DMCA.

“Break the pencil” is just the latest iteration. Half way between a Twitter joke and an organized push to exterminate the livelihoods of the traditional artists whose work they build on.

It was probably a joke all along though. Hopefully. I’ve met my fair share of genuine haters online though.

#7: Midjourney vs Jingna Zhang

Pro fashion photographer, class action plaintiff and Cara founder Jingna Zhang posted to X about unwanted Midjourney attention:

I took the opportunity to expose Midjourney to anyone interested:

#6: GenAI developments from the artist POV

One of the longer written posts that took off. It rallied some support, and met dismissal by those who chose to look some other way.

POV: it’s 2022. You make a living making images.

Some rich dude runs a supercomputer for a month across all you ever made to outcompete you by producing machine remixes of your work.

His company markets their ability to produce images in your style as a main feature, and tells paying users that they are the ones actually making what the company produces (while retaining all rights to their output in the fine print.)

The conceit that their users make what they order from them is initially backed by their fine print promising copyrights vested in end-users. Before legal reality catches up, they sell sixteen million subscriptions and alter their fine print.”

(cont’d)

#5: Microsoft does the silent opt-in thing. Ish.

What spreads well isn’t necessarily what’s most truthful.

After a year of dodgy statements from top Microsoft management on IP, questionable ToS extensions, silent opt-ins etc from their partners, trust was at an all-time low when an author sounded the alarm about Word AI features “phoning home”:

I posted it, it took off, and upon closer investigation, it turned out a lot of the scare was unwarranted and due to central IT policies foisted on inattentive users. But the whole affair still left a sour taste and vague unease among users. General sentiment being, it’s bad enough to be forced to rent your typewriter — you don’t expect it to upload your content without asking.

Just as I rarely block users, I never delete posts — even if they later turn out misinformed. I did have to edit this one quite a bit though, with apologies.

#4: A rabelaisian romp on genAI

“How is AI learning art any different from humans learning art?”
This argument is long dead elsewhere but keeps popping up on LinkedIn for some reason. Ron Chan produced the definitive answer back in April:

There is data to back this one up: billions images ingested, and more images generated in the first year of genAI proper (up to July of 2023) than photos taken in all of history.

#3: The problem with DallE3

I was proud to see this one take off the days before Christmas. I originally made the meme back in spring for educational use and added it to the Top Ten Lies About AI Art debunked post. I took the time to summarize the entire situation, from ignored opt-outs to regulatory entrepreneurship. Worth a read and a share!

#2: A teacher’s cry for help

This quote post from a teacher exasperated over kids swallowing chatGPT hallucinations without question struck a nerve. My comment:

I felt that. Except the “terrified” part. Ridiculous, is all it is. A bad trillion dollar joke. Autocomplete mistaken for a fact machine. All of the world’s intellectual property smuggled out the back door of our platforms, minced down to a content McFlurry and rented back out to us -- as if that was even legal.

Time to wake up from the Nonsense Machine.

#1: Work done by Artists

Artist Castillo Anaïs nailed it with this one, and it took off like wildfire in August. My two cents:

Image remixers are only as good as the images that were compressed for remixing.

There’s a lot more where this came from. I’ve been averaging two posts a day, once a week something more ambitious. I could easily put together two more posts like this, with the content that didn’t get as much traction.

Should I? Let me know. And feel free to reach out over there, too.

The fight for artist rights continues in 2025…