RuPaul under fire for using AI special effects in new movie

[bxr 1,853]

4 hours ago, Creyk said:

I think they are targeting kids BECAUSE they don't know better, so they are an easy demo to go for and normalize it for the new generation. 

4 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Wouldn’t be surprised, tbh 

The deregulation of children‘s media, in particular, under the Reagan administration was a low-key critical shift in cultural literacy … or the culture industry in a market society … fascinating discourse / policy indicator for a weekend read … also, a solid compass to navigate the practical dynamics of human capital in media culture … just a fwiw share

Spoiler

Before the 1980s
 

Spoiler

When children’s television first hit the airwaves, networks clamored to fill the daytime hours with cheap, easily made shows for kids. By the 1950s, parents' groups had partnered with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to limit violence and innuendo from anything aimed at young audiences. In the following decades, popular programs like “Captain Kangaroo” (1955-84) and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” (1968-2001) combined education with entertainment value for children. 

Advocacy groups—particularly Action for Children's Television (ACT), founded in 1968—worked with the FCC to strictly regulate television advertising during children’s programming.

“They didn’t really take children’s capacity for meaning-making and interpreting media very seriously,” says Timothy Burke, professor of history at Swarthmore College and author of Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up With Cartoon Culture. “They saw children as being in perpetual danger from what they watched."

In one especially memorable example, ACT argued that Mattel’s 1969 cartoon “Hot Wheels,” served primarily to sell tiny cars to eager audiences, not to tell a story. Groups like ACT and regulatory agencies objected to this blatant advertising. "The FCC agreed and asked stations to log part of the show as advertising time," writes David Owen in The Man Who Invented Saturday Morning. Even today, the idea of monolithic companies selling products to impressionable viewers rankles parents and children’s advocates.

For a period of time, these forces were able to hold capitalism at bay—until the money got too good. 

· · ·

If you grew up in the 80s and loved things like G.I. Joe, and My Little Pony, you have Ronald Reagan to thank.

Ronald Reagan instituted the deregulation of advertising to children in the 1980s. This allowed companies to market as much as they wanted to kids, leading to an explosion of new toys, cartoons, junk food, and breakfast cereals. 

Despite the bombardment in advertising we face each day – especially children – there was a time when people were on the lookout for their “promotional well-being.”

Rules had been in place since the 1960s when advertisers discovered how television would be the perfect gateway to get their products in front of as many young eyes as possible. This is important because children dictate so much of a family’s spending.

This article is a look back on deregulation and how it changed the world of advertising to kids forever. 

 

 

[MountainMonster 2,370]

6 minutes ago, gagzus said:

The idea is the art, but the product is also the art, and as I said GenAI doesn’t have an original thought nor an original product. If you ask for a surrealist painting it will create something that 1) isn’t a painting it’s a photo (which defeats the purpose of asking for a painting) and 2) something that uses other surrealist artist’s interpretations and not your own.
 

So it isn’t art. It’s a collage or the equivalent of gathering sources and (ironically) not crediting them. 

 

Again, agree to disagree. To me, GenAI is just another option other than a paintbrush. 

[Bronco 22,419]

1 minute ago, MountainMonster said:

Ok - and you’re missing the synthesis of my argument. What’s your alternative solution?

Simple.

We don't need generative AI. 

It has shown zero social or actual economic benefits. 

Even the areas which reported early benefits have walked that back and highlighted unexpected or previously unacknowledged inefficiencies and costs. 

Tech firms on the orders of c-suites cut large swathes of entry level/junior devops/sysadm/coding roles and replaced them with genAI models. And the result was a significantly larger production of development & code that mid-level and senior level staff had to review for accuracy. 

That larger production led to a workload larger than the existing mid & senior levels could manage, and the work produced was of an inferior quality. Leading to companies either having to reverse job cuts or hire more skilled/expert staff into the mid/senior levels. Meaning efficiency went down & costs went up. 

6 minutes ago, MountainMonster said:

None of you will stop watching Drag Race.

I did.

6 minutes ago, MountainMonster said:

None of you have left here despite several known instances of Gaga using generative AI. You’re still feeding it time and money but looking disdainfully at every instance of its usage;

There's no Gaga product featuring AI from this era which I directly contributed to. And if AI use continues in Gagas work, especially if it takes on larger roles I will absolutely not support future albums or tours in any way. 

And leaving GGD would have zero impact. Thats a stupid comment. And trust me, if it did I'd have left.

8 minutes ago, MountainMonster said:

and regarding the neck, back and eye issues of desk jobs - be so fr… I’d take any of those over losing appendages, my life or developing terminal diseases from working in labor and manufacturing. 

Love how you took 2 seperate points I made there, ignored the factual basis of both and combined them into an imagined 3rd one to be mad at. 

My point which you bastardised was not that eye degeneration and musculoskeletal issues for office staff were better or worse than health issues faced by manual labourers. It was that technological advances have created new health issues, many of which are only just emerging (much like they did for manual jobs - no one knew about asbetsos issues for years) for office workers. So the idea that we have created work that is better for the human body is a clear fallacy, we have just changed the harms we inflict on it to extract wealth from it. 

And you completely ignored my point that the industrial workers you want us to believe were saved from harm have not been. They have simply been robbed of employment and forced into worse living situations with less recourse to support themselves in dealing with any bodily damage already incurred through manual labour. 

In deindustrialised areas - unemployment is higher, especially long term unemployment. Health outcomes are worse. With higher rates of chronic health conditions, higher rates of "deaths of despair" and lower life expectancies. Higher rates of food insecurity. One in eight metropolitan workers in the rust belt are in precarious employment. Rustbelt poverty rates are twice the national US average, in some cities its 3 times the national average. The median household income is $24,000 lower in these areas. And home ownership is consistently declining having dropped by 10% since the dot com boom. 

And yet you're here saying that technological advancement has helped these workers because they no longer have to do manual labour. And that we should celebrate technological advancement ensuring modern professional workers get the same experience.

Its laughable.

 

 

 

[gagzus 21,105]

4 minutes ago, MountainMonster said:

Again, agree to disagree. To me, GenAI is just another option other than a paintbrush. 

Im happy to agree to disagree, however, as I said GenAI can’t make you a painting it’s can only make you an image that resembles a scan of a painting or an image designed to look like a painting. It will never be able to give you a physical painting that is in fact, painted. Only an artist can make you a painting. 

Edited 13 hours ago by gagzus

[gagzus 21,105]

12 minutes ago, bxr said:

The deregulation of children‘s media, in particular, under the Reagan administration was a low-key critical shift in cultural literacy … or the culture industry in a market society … fascinating discourse / policy indicator for a weekend read … also, a solid compass to navigate the practical dynamics of human capital in media culture … just a fwiw share

  Reveal hidden contents

Before the 1980s
 

  Hide contents

When children’s television first hit the airwaves, networks clamored to fill the daytime hours with cheap, easily made shows for kids. By the 1950s, parents' groups had partnered with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to limit violence and innuendo from anything aimed at young audiences. In the following decades, popular programs like “Captain Kangaroo” (1955-84) and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” (1968-2001) combined education with entertainment value for children. 

Advocacy groups—particularly Action for Children's Television (ACT), founded in 1968—worked with the FCC to strictly regulate television advertising during children’s programming.

“They didn’t really take children’s capacity for meaning-making and interpreting media very seriously,” says Timothy Burke, professor of history at Swarthmore College and author of Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up With Cartoon Culture. “They saw children as being in perpetual danger from what they watched."

In one especially memorable example, ACT argued that Mattel’s 1969 cartoon “Hot Wheels,” served primarily to sell tiny cars to eager audiences, not to tell a story. Groups like ACT and regulatory agencies objected to this blatant advertising. "The FCC agreed and asked stations to log part of the show as advertising time," writes David Owen in The Man Who Invented Saturday Morning. Even today, the idea of monolithic companies selling products to impressionable viewers rankles parents and children’s advocates.

For a period of time, these forces were able to hold capitalism at bay—until the money got too good. 

· · ·

If you grew up in the 80s and loved things like G.I. Joe, and My Little Pony, you have Ronald Reagan to thank.

Ronald Reagan instituted the deregulation of advertising to children in the 1980s. This allowed companies to market as much as they wanted to kids, leading to an explosion of new toys, cartoons, junk food, and breakfast cereals. 

Despite the bombardment in advertising we face each day – especially children – there was a time when people were on the lookout for their “promotional well-being.”

Rules had been in place since the 1960s when advertisers discovered how television would be the perfect gateway to get their products in front of as many young eyes as possible. This is important because children dictate so much of a family’s spending.

This article is a look back on deregulation and how it changed the world of advertising to kids forever. 

 

 

I think about this sometimes, how often as a kid did we have direct advertisement for toys in between our cartoons that we’d then beg our parents to buy. It’s kinda preying on the innocence of children in hindsight. 

[Bronco 22,419]

Just now, gagzus said:

I think about this sometimes, how often as a kid did we have direct advertisement for toys in between our cartoons that we’d then beg our parents to buy. It’s kinda preying on the innocence of children in hindsight. 

Some of the biggest investors in psychiatric research over the years has been advertising and marketing companies. 

[Ziggy 13,651]

2 hours ago, MountainMonster said:

 

 

The Luddites said the same of the automated loom; unfortunately we all know how that story ended. Now even the few actual couturiers still use fabrics made on an automated loom. I suspect the perspective will change with time on this, too - and artists will be lauded for how they use AI. 

I respect the opinions, and agree that there’s a grave loss of respect for artists skills - but I think there’s also a bevy of new opportunities for creatives to take while embracing the use of AI. 

Diva this isn’t a Luddite conversation stop with that 2024 talking point lol there are opportunities for iterative ai but generative ai is literally positioning communities, notably not leading to job creation and is precariously propping up industries and economies in unsustainable ways. This is not the Industrial Revolution and this is not an automatic loom. You are not reckoning with the scale of depravity and evil of people like Sam Altman. The sort of AI you’re shrugging about defending has been used to target children and innocent civilians in Gaza with little to no human check; it’s been used to illegally spy on citizens and hunt them for deportation. This is not an automatic loom. You might say, “well industrial manufacture of clothing helped the army, too” but listen to that statement back. Helped make clothing vs helped decimate populations in war and waste. They’re talking about making intelligence a resource to sell us even though that’s what they stole to create their programs. You have to wrap your head around the magnitude of what happens if people don’t take this seriously enough.

[MountainMonster 2,370]

24 minutes ago, Bronco said:

Simple.

We don't need generative AI. 

It has shown zero social or actual economic benefits. 

First of all, you’re making a huge blanket claim on technology still in its infancy with not even a fraction of enough time to test for its social or economic benefits. But, if you want a quick overview of the plusses: economically it’s great for small businesses, and helps people work smarter by accelerating brainstorming, writing, learning, research, and problem-solving. It reduces time spent on repetitive tasks, makes specialized knowledge more accessible, and gives individuals and small teams the ability to accomplish more with fewer resources. Socially, it can expand access to education, creativity, and information. It also helps people communicate across languages, speak more clearly and more effectively for different situations. Additionally, by lowering barriers to expertise and innovation, it has the potential to make knowledge, opportunity, and creative tools available to a much wider range of people. Claiming there’s zero benefit is simply outrageous. Additionally, your examples all have to do with gigantic businesses - what about the small businesses? The solopreneurs? Startups? GenerativeAI is massively helpful for businesses that can not yet afford to scale. 
 

34 minutes ago, Bronco said:

There's no Gaga product featuring AI from this era which I directly contributed to. And if AI use continues in Gagas work, especially if it takes on larger roles I will absolutely not support future albums or tours in any way. 

And leaving GGD would have zero impact. Thats a stupid comment. And trust me, if it did I'd have left.

If you buy a Chick-fil-a sandwich from an individual franchise, that franchise still helps pay the larger corporation. The same is true of this - you may not have bought the AI generated poster, but I’m sure you threw money at Mayhem somewhere. And you may not have watched the AI generated candle melt, but you still watched Requiem.  Additionally, follow the logic - I clearly was referring to being here indicates you’re still a fan and therefore still supportive regardless of AI being utilized. Let’s not get ad hominem with it and call it stupid - you knew precisely what was being inferred. 
 

42 minutes ago, Bronco said:

Love how you took 2 seperate points I made there, ignored the factual basis of both and combined them into an imagined 3rd one to be mad at. 

Not mad, I have no skin in the game and truly could care less; just wanted to have a fun conversation about the reality of what the future holds and learn more about why people have such vehement opinions against it.  I suppose I don’t see what benefit separating that something negative happens from work of any sort makes for your argument. It just makes me think you must not know anyone who actually works or has worked in those fields. I’ve known people who have quite literally lost appendages due to low quality, low tech manufacturing technology - something that does not happen when that role is automated. I even know just here in my town how many people died at our local plywood plant before automation came into the picture. Yes - all work has risks, but no one lost their arm, leg or life to a rogue computer or copy machine. 
 

53 minutes ago, Bronco said:

In deindustrialised areas - unemployment is higher, especially long term unemployment. Health outcomes are worse. With higher rates of chronic health conditions, higher rates of "deaths of despair" and lower life expectancies. Higher rates of food insecurity. One in eight metropolitan workers in the rust belt are in precarious employment. Rustbelt poverty rates are twice the national US average, in some cities its 3 times the national average. The median household income is $24,000 lower in these areas. And home ownership is consistently declining having dropped by 10% since the dot com boom. 

The socioeconomic problems of many deindustrialized communities are real, but attributing them primarily to deindustrialization is a massive oversimplification of a much more complex set of forces including automation, demographic change, education levels, public policy, and national economic trends. Moreover, many former industrial cities have successfully reinvented themselves, demonstrating that industrial decline does not inevitably lead to long-term economic and social deterioration. But you’re also using figures that provide no context.  They’re $24 k lower in income and 20% lower cost of living. Let’s look at some quintessentially rust belt states - Ohio, for instance, has a median home price of 245 k versus the national average of 404 k. Michigan is just 260 k. Here in the small town I live in, the median home price is over 600 k and an even lower state median income than any of the rust belt states and industry has never played a role in my state’s economy. Maybe if correlation means causation, as you’ve argued, my state would have a higher income if we would have had industry and then deindustrialized. 
 

In regards to health claims, the largest causes of death are suicide and overdoses, which indicate nothing of the health care systems, and they could likely have higher levels of long term diseases due to exposure to chemicals used in industry. 
 

anyways - I won’t carry on anymore with it; but I don’t agree with you, and I still respect your opinion regardless - and you gave me some great food for thought and a fun discussion. 

[MountainMonster 2,370]

36 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

Diva this isn’t a Luddite conversation stop with that 2024 talking point lol there are opportunities for iterative ai but generative ai is literally positioning communities, notably not leading to job creation and is precariously propping up industries and economies in unsustainable ways. This is not the Industrial Revolution and this is not an automatic loom. You are not reckoning with the scale of depravity and evil of people like Sam Altman. The sort of AI you’re shrugging about defending has been used to target children and innocent civilians in Gaza with little to no human check; it’s been used to illegally spy on citizens and hunt them for deportation. This is not an automatic loom. You might say, “well industrial manufacture of clothing helped the army, too” but listen to that statement back. Helped make clothing vs helped decimate populations in war and waste. They’re talking about making intelligence a resource to sell us even though that’s what they stole to create their programs. You have to wrap your head around the magnitude of what happens if people don’t take this seriously enough.

Agree regarding its use in the military and for anything that makes it easier for people’s lives to be taken or interfered with by governments - I don’t like that or think that should be allowed. But again - how do we stop that from happening, and what does that have to do with this example of generative AI being used in entertainment?

[TheSine 6,794]

3 hours ago, MountainMonster said:

None of you will stop watching Drag Race.

 

[Flippy 14,068]

[BornAsUnic0rn 2,222]

9 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

In terms of AI usage: was it not obvious that they were using gen AI for the writing for the acting challenges during the writers’ strike, too? Like let’s use our thinking caps, sistren 

They didn’t use writers anyways so the writers strike didn’t do anything to them.

[Jill 31,547]

5 hours ago, Bronco said:

Its a propaganda of history that luddites were against advancement.

The luddite movement was specifically an attack on a ruling class that sought to weaken the working populations. It was an attack on low wages, it was a battle against the deliberate designs by the industrialists to make workers poorer. Luddites of the time weren't attacking technology, they were attacking the wealthy who were seeking to undercut workers. 

They were attacking technology because they saw it as the culprit of the things you mentioned, but they didn't understand that human evolution necessarily converges into the advancement of technology, and that in an of itself is not the problem. The Luddites came about due to the contradiction of artisanal vs. automatic labor which is a problem since times immemorial. As I've said during a discussion in another thread, history is plagued with artisanal labor being defended against the machines, but hsitory has told us time & time again that the machine (controlled by humans) always more or less prevails, because it allows for a more comfortable life.

This was the case with capitalism itself: capitalism was progressive, it phenomenally improved the quality of life for millions of people like never seen before, partly thanks to mechanization, but nowadays, the advancement of productive forces is increasingly incompatible with capitalism.

5 hours ago, Bronco said:

How much longer are those of us who have to work to live going to accept technological advancement making it harder to get well paid work while the owners of it get richer? 

Are we really supposed to just sit still and watch as the few remaining employment opportunities in western societies are increasingly automated and human workers are forced out? 

So the problem here isn't the technology then. As you already said, it's those who control it. Yet, protests against AI basically present themselves as being "against AI", many times citing abstract sentiments with blurry boundaries about the "human soul", the "artist's sensibility", etc etc, which aren't material, but purely ideological. Jobs are talked about, yes, but the response isn't a push to regulate layoffs, establish a UBI, or things like that. Instead it's to heavily regulate (or even dismantle) AI! It’s completely backwards thinking, an answer to a question that doesn't align with what is actually happening.

Let's assume this campaign succeeds and AI no longer exists, to take the most exaggerated case. Then what? We go back to 2019, which as we all know, was famous for being an era full of opportunities for everyone and universal access to goods and services. Of course it wasn't! The problem with all these discussions I think is that people have started using AI as a strawman to avoid facing long-standing structural problems. Instead of saying "eat the rich" or facing more radical options, they say "kill AI" and so their discourse becomes politically correct, almost universally accepted. This is the triumph of the far-right on discourse as well, because it seems AI took a life on its own even, it's just commodity fetishism disguised as revolution.

But even without AI, the underlying problems will remain! Another AI or job-risking technology will succeed it. It's like trying to clean up a cemetery by removing the tombstones while the bodies remain underneath. Fruitless and completely missing the point.

AI itself is not the problem, as I've said many times. Technological advancement is necessary. AI has contributed immensely to countless fields and it isn't going away, it's not going to be dismantled. But if there is something not working here, it's the distribution of this progress, and who benefits and who doesn't. AI should be a good thing.it could mean more leisure and recreation time, and yet it doesn't. Why? Because we are embedded in relations of production that prevent it, and AI is not to blame for that! Otherwise, as I said, everything would have been better before AI, and it wasn't. We need to keep a cool head about these things and stop directing so much energy toward the wrong target.

Edited 9 hours ago by Jill

[Bronco 22,419]

41 minutes ago, Jill said:

AI itself is not the problem, as I've said many times. Technological advancement is necessary

Stop using the umbrella term when we are discussing genAI.

There is *no* benefit to genAI. GenAI is not necessary. 

AI itself is not a problem. Hence why the last 2 decades of it has not been a problem. 

GenAI specifically is an issue. It is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and a product which has no sociological or economic benefit. GenAI is both a problematic tool from a left wing perspective and from a right wing market oriented perspective as it is both a threat to workers and a long term threat to capital.

[nATAH 55,451]

5 hours ago, MountainMonster said:

Again, agree to disagree. To me, GenAI is just another option other than a paintbrush. 

a paintbrush doesn't steal, genAI's only option is to steal