M I R I

Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.

unfortunately, a lot of the userbase won't opt out. those who don't see this post, those who have posted to tumblr but don't anymore, users on older versions of the app who forget to opt out next time they're on desktop, etc. the point of making it opt-out is to take advantage of people who wouldn't have opted in but don't/can't opt out in time. automatically opting out people who have discouraged search crawling is a gesture that helps Tumblr look more kind, but from the fact that everyone else has to manually opt out, Tumblr is definitely not looking benevolent.

I wonder, will Tumblr/Automattic be selling images from deactivated blogs? I assume deactivated blogs can't opt out.

when will they start selling this data? Is it already too late to keep them from selling every image you've posted before you opted out?

and if they're especially malicious, I wonder if they could get away with saying "this image is from a blog that's opted out, but it was reblogged by a blog that hasn't opted out, so we're selling the image that's on that non-opted-out blog."

making users need to opt out to keep their images from being taken and sold is a shitty move that makes it clear Tumblr/Automattic don't respect our privacy, and @staff are really not giving us much info here to suggest otherwise.

Le génie du mal (The Genius of Evil), known affectionately as Lucifer of Liège.

Statue by Guillaume Geefs, installed at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Liège, Belgium in 1848.

Baldomero Romero Ressendi

William

I had a tattoo client ask if I ever used AI to design tattoos for me. Man I spent the better part of a decade doing shitty bit work as a graphic designer and now that I have the space to do whatever I want, I'm gonna let the computer generate random garbage for me? What next should I have a computer that eats my dinner and fucks my wife?

I feel like people get so hung up on the results of a thing that they don't appreciate that the process of making it is, actually, enjoyable.

It's like if you have a friend who likes to bake, asking if they'd like to just buy cupcakes from the store instead of making them. The end result of the cupcake is secondary to the joy you get from having made cupcakes.

Art isn't a slog or a chore or something I want to avoid. Art is fun. It's rewarding. It feels good to do it. You may as well be asking me if I want the AI to watch television for me, it doesn't make any sense, I'm not participating and would gain nothing from it.

Warwick Goble (British, 1863 – 1943)

1930s “i’m the guy that” pinbacks, part 2