How I use AI. (Spicy Rant & Poll)

Hi Patron~

Gosh, this is one of those aiming the gun right at my tootsies moments that I can't seem to resist. But I want to learn and be a better person, and am asking for your input to help me on that voyage in the context of an author writing and selling smut. Everyone reading this most likely has an interest in what I am doing, I'd presume.

This urge to have holy feet came when I recently got/noticed a poignant message from a fan of my work that my use of AI to generate artwork for icons rubbed them the wrong way. It caused me to stop and think, and here we are.

There will be a poll at the end for anyone who wishes to weigh in. Obviously, as always, my options may not cover the full gamut of opinions and ideas on the subject, but I will do my best. And there isn't a single message sent to me on Patreon that I haven't responded to so I am open to hearing your thoughts about it. I have a girlfriend who is vehemently opposed to AI and I think in lots of context she is completely right.

The fact that I use AI which most likely learned from subject matter belonging to innocent artists to generate artwork at all essentially lands me dead in the water, sinking to the bottom, gnawed on by piranhas, bones rotted into filth that no upstanding ground-feeder would bother supping upon. Obviously, large learning models would scrape up every molecule of my done and dusted remains, wipe them on a pallet, and paint prettier pictures in your mind with the muddy shades of Michelle within seconds at the mere cost of every fresh water source on earth going up into steam along with the potential revenue for every human creator of art ever.

(Please know there are tongue in cheek jokes mixed in with my opinions/ideas/questions)

Yeah. I know. I'm not perfect. And I can't justify my actions. I eat meat at the cost of nearly genocidal-levels of murder. I drive a vehicle which basically is pushing mother earth to nearly FF7-levels of irreversible dilemma. I am saving up to get a new vehicle instead of purchasing solar panels like the capitalist sheep they want me to be. For goodness' sake, I write dirty words about breasts and penises in as lewd a manner as possible in the face of our sweet, sweet innocent and chaste gods.

I can't justify my actions, but I can improve, but I am also an opportunistic jezebel who is interested in participating and competing to attract attention in a world where I want people to read my work and recognize me for my words, stories, and (written)imagery.

So maybe what I am asking here is, how wrong will can I be before I am wronger than you can forgive? Gosh, just writing this blog feels like I am only digging a hole nearly as big as the ones I keep blasting into my doggies. But on we go.

How I use AI as an Author

(Yes, it took me this long to admit my AI-related sins in order of depth to hell I will be sent, shallow to deep)

1. I post icons of my avatar in my totally free rants here on Patreon.

2. I use a series of generated AI images to help describe what I imagine how I see my characters in my stories, or parts of the images that match those characters. Sometimes I use those (reference) images in posts I only offer to paying Patrons.

3. I sometimes use AI images in the creation of digital book covers that draw attention to potential readers to read my blurbs and hopefully read or purchase my stories.

That is about it from what I can tell. I use them to draw attention, accompany my words and illustrate my feelings (like glown-up emoji), and as a reference.

1. As an actual writer author I use google docs' spelling and grammar check. A site called hemingwayapp.com to identify my wordier sentences while re-writing. It has paid AI features, but I ain't paying for or using them. I also use the free versions of grammarly or a program called languagetool, which like most of these writing assistants, offer a ton of in depth AI features for money that I don't use. I mostly just add a billion commas and catch a few tense changes and mis-wordings that google didn't notice. (The difference between spell check and AI from what I can tell in these contexts.)

I have used my 'free once in your lifetime (per e-mail address)' ai-powered in-depth summarization of one of my writings and was fucking blown away by it. That is the kind of feedback, insight, and information about a piece of writing you'd have to be hundreds of dollars to a proper editor to offer you after hours of back and forth and reading by both parties. Thankfully, it costs money (or the annoyance of making a ton of email addresses and signing up over and over again) and I am a cheap and lazy jezebel. So I don't see myself using it. It was interesting though, but didn't affect any of my written content.

Maybe if quadruple the patrons here now were supporting me I could consider that. But by then I will be debating if I need to work a day job or not, you know? I'd be able to afford editors.

When Amazon asks me about my writing I tell them I don't use AI for my writing, but do use it for my covers, with hand-made adjustments. (I sell things on Amazon so I am making the rich richer in the process. Directly to hell I go. You don't use Amazon, do you?)

Nice sentiments, but I'm still wrong.

I think that using AI to generate and create new sentences and stories is not for me. I feel it's disingenuous as a writer as well. But there are tons of people who pump out ai slop stories that most likely scrape from my reddit posts or pirated rants about nipples, slap a cover on it, and are making money. Dang.

And my human-generated slop is sitting right next to them. Is this why making ai art is so bad? I get it. I also think ai is better are pictures than it is as writing and people can tell the difference. There are plenty of people who can tell the difference between ai art and real art as well. I have a bit of an eye for it, too. I look at lots of art and prefer human-made stuff.

I am confident that my writing style and subjects and imagery are way better than AI slop. I'd hope that you'd agree. The reason I started writing is because I couldn't find anything that eased into the sweet spot that I desire, and I have begun to find more like-minded folks here. I wrote about consequence-free planet-sized tits and cocks stretching down city blocks somewhere. I have dipped a bit into 'giga' waters in the past, but usually only as a climactic flourish after a huge build up. (See Experimental Medicine's conclusion) And people will laugh at me for considering those sizes huge.

Anyway. But as a writer I need a way to attract attention to my words in a sea of AI slop, and slop from other writers as well as proper offerings from fellow (boy, do I talk my self up here) authors who are crushing it. I like writing which is why I am doing it. I am enjoying the process of sharing my writing and selling it and even getting some kickbacks for it. It's been years of hard work giving my stories away for free to get to this point.

But I am still not at the point where I can commission artwork that I can count will return investments on. I'm not pulling massive numbers here or on Amazon. If I sell ten books on amazon in a month (at 2.99, after fees and percentages nets me close to 2. So 20$?) that is a freaking good month for me there.

And the art I do commission here is more than that. And I am already bending the poor guy backwards giving much less than he deserves after I made a post begging for cheap art to people who were desperate to make it for any money. You ever see my commission prices? Compared to some of these people around the net I am asking for pennies on the dollar from what I can tell. Maybe I am the crazy one.

This is to (unjustifiably) justify that I can't really afford paying artists for professional covers at the moment, so I use AI. I can't afford the time and effort and price to pay an artist to read my stories, and sketch up images from them to post alongside the work. (If you are interested, let me know. My current guy is taking forever and a half to get things done.)

Gods, I would offer free smut for half decent sketches based on the stories I wrote. If I had a team of two or three humans who wanted to read my smut and liked drawing that kind of thing (Again, needle in a haystack) then I'd want to hire them on regularly. Any part of the story, even a long-distance background shot, a scene that jumps out to them, that would be so awesome.

Artists don't want to read my smut. They want to create their art. I am just a conduit for them. So it is difficult to get what I want when there is that disconnect. I can wrestle the robot into giving me close enough to what I want and photoshop and crop out the worst of it, and cover the rest up with text.

Again, I am not arguing the moral dilemma. Remember? Dead in the water? Piranhas? That excellent image of a robot using my goop as paint on the pallet? That was clever I thought. Right off the dome.

I am not even arguing, really. I am telling you my situation here. And my use cases. And hopefully you give some feedback on the matter via the poll so I can decide if posting pics of huge-titted avatar of myself in blogs will make you hate my words. If you don't want to support me financially, that is absolutely fine. I release a lot of my work for free already and you can find most of the paid stuff elsewhere easily. (You ever pirate anything? Watch anything for free on video websites that is actually paid content? Straight down into the darkest hells right beside me, buddy.)

Ah, I think I've run out of steam on this subject, or lost the plot as I tend to with most of my rants. Got side-tracked with a converastion with co-workers.

TL;DR I use AI to generate images to attract attention to my words. I am aware its morally wrong, but I and everyone does lots of morally wrong things. I'm not here to shame anyone, just share my situation. I am not wealthy enough to commission exclusively human-made artwork to draw attention to my words, so I cut corners using these tools. My writing is also up against AI-generated stories in online marketplaces, but I don't use AI writing in my stories because I believe I have the talent and creativity to surpass my competition. But I still feel I need to/want to slap some titties on the target while I continue the journey.

Please feel free to check one or more of these boxes if any of them express your thoughts on the matter well enough. Otherwise I open the floor in the Patreon chat. I'd happily jump in there until it gets so bad I have to nuke the channel, but it would be cool to see. And if you have a specific opinion, my DMs are always open and I want to hear what you have to think.

Until next rant,

Ta ta~

~Michelle

(Also, that Ai-horror avatar thing was way worse than I anticipated. So much for not skewing the poll results after that mess. Have a pallet cleanser; Me as a furry.)