The DCEU has always had identity issues. They want to be the MCU. They aren’t, at least not yet. Recently they received new overlords: James Gunn and Peter Safran, who have been hired to map out the DCEU’s next several years. They’re reportedly still working on their ambitious, cross-medium plan, but one idea has scampered out into the open: Multiple sources are telling The Hollywood Reporterthat Wonder Woman 3 is kaput, at least in its current form.
This comes after Patty Jenkins, who helmed the first two Diana Prince romps, reportedly submitted her and her co-writers’ treatment. Alas, sources say she was told her version didn’t fit in with Gunn and Safran’s still-evolving plans for the franchise. A final decision has not yet been made.
Again, the Gunn-Safran plan is still evolving, but THR maps out a couple possibilities of where it could go. One is that the “Snyderverse” gang could all or mostly be shelved, including not only Gadot’s Wonder Woman but also Henry Cavill’s Superman. That would be a bit awkward: The actor returned to the role in a Black Adam walk-on, and he’s scheduled to appear in this summer’s The Flash. But despite declaring he was back, Warner Bros. Discovery could renege on that plan, even removing him from Barry Allen’s solo debut.
Speaking of Black Adam, it’s unlikely the Dwayne Johnson starrer will get a sequel. While it appeared to do well, with the best solo opening of the star’s career, it’s actually only breaking even, not even making its $190 million budget back at the domestic box office. (Globally it will either break even or turn a small profit.)
Still, there are two bits of good news for DC films fans. One is that Jason Momoa’s Aquaman probably isn’t going anywhere and may even play a key role in the Gunn-Safran arc. Likewise, if Shazam! Fury of the Gods is a smash when it opens this spring, that would make it harder for Gunn and Safran to basically clear house and start anew, which is one option. Then there’s Robert Pattinson’s Batman, who has his own separate wing, complete with its own spinoffs. Presumably Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker and Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn are safe, too.
But this is all up in the air, contingent on what Gunn and Safran come up with and whether Warner Bros. Discovery brass play ball. But anyone waiting for round three with Gadot’s Diana Prince should probably not hold their breath.
Tickets for Coachella are in high demand. After years of quarantine, music lovers are desperate to get out and experience their favorite performers again, so much so that the legendary California festival is all sold out. However, there is still hope.
Waitlists for both weekends are still available and can be found here. Along with that, tickets are available on a variety of secondhand seller sites, such as Vivid Seats and Stubhub. For the first weekend of the festival, prices on Vivid Seats start at $545. On Stubhub, they start at $657. For the second weekend, prices on Vivid Seats start at $501. On Stubhub, they start at $537.
The first weekend is set for April 14-16, while the second is April 21-23. So far, co-founder Paul Tollett confirmed that Frank Ocean will be performing after the 2020 festival was canceled due to COVID. Last year, the lineup wasn’t announced until mid-January, so it’s likely more names won’t be revealed until then. Billie Eilish and Harry Styles were the 2022 headliners, and it’s safe to say the audience was pleased. Other performers on the bill included Doja Cat, The Weeknd, Baby Keem, Kendrick Lamar, Lil Baby, and Megan Thee Stallion. Meanwhile, Kanye West dropped off the roster at the last second.
This year’s Governors Ball Music Festival generated plenty of headlines. Roddy Ricch earned a six-figure check for a set he missed after getting arrested on gun charges at the festival’s security checkpoint. Kid Cudi dropped his single “Do What I Want” ahead of his headlining set, and Halsey performed a cover of Kate Bush’s resurgent “Running Up That Hill.” Governors Ball 2023 is slated for June 10 through June 12 at Citi Field in New York City, but who will be the headliners?
Well, we don’t know. But we can make an educated guess. After taking 2020 off during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival shared that Billie Eilish, ASAP Rocky and J Balvin would headline in 2021 on May 4, 2021. But The 2022 lineup was unveiled on January 25, 2022, so recency bias indicates that the 2023 lineup announcement could come as early as next month.
Rolling Loud has gotten a head start. Rolling Loud California will be headlined by Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, Future, and Lil Wayne from March 3-5, 2023 at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, California. Scott will also headline Rolling Loud Rotterdam alongside Kendrick Lamar from June 30 to July 1, 2023 at Rotterdam Ahoy.
You can sign up for alerts about Governors Ball 2023 on the festival’s official website.
Roddy Ricch is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Every year, Uproxx puts out a big old series of gift guides; and every year, the Travel & Adventure Gift Guide grabs a lot of eyeballs. Maybe it’s got good SEO or social media mojo or whatever, but my personal theory is that people like these sorts of gifts because we all like to imagine ourselves (and our loved ones) as the sorts of people who need these products. Whether we travel often or rarely, across the globe or in the same state, we all love to consider ourselves vagabonds, brigands, and wanderers.
That’s all to the good in my book. I think that a bunch of people who fancy themselves “citizens of the world,” is a net win — even if their only 2022 travels were to a package resort in Key West. If travel is indeed “fatal to prejudice,” as Mark Twain famously wrote, then even just longing to travel is a step in the right direction.
Whew. That got deep pretty quickly. Point being: We love travel, you love travel, and the people you’re buying gifts for love travel too. So we rounded up some gifts that capture that spirit across a variety of price ranges. For apparel, I went with unisex-feeling men’s fits but I gave some options for women, too. And remember to check out our “experiential travel gift guide” for less tangible but equally enticing items!
Roaming — Roark’s Adventure Atlas
Amazon
Price: $31.26
Roark is so cool.
I mean, it’s a clothing brand, ultimately, competing with other clothing brands. Fine but not revolutionary. And yet somehow they’ve built a definable “Roark lifestyle ” and this book puts it on full display — with pro surfers and fun-looking miscreants venturing across the globe surfing and skating and just soaking in the warm tones of late afternoon or cold tones of the arctic. In-house photographer and longtime FOU (friend of Uproxx) Dylan Gordon does a sterling job of conjuring mood with his photos and the Roark team brings together a fantastic collection of writers to add context and story to what would otherwise be just a lovely coffee table book.
BOTTOM LINE:
I’ve owned this volume for three months now and have picked it up at random only to get lost in it multiple times. Best of all — it motivates me to travel in a more raw, close-to-the-bone, rough and rugged way — with a little less tech and a little more intrepid spirit.
The Vagabond’s Way — 366 Meditations On Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel
Amazon
Price: $26.49
If you were traveling in the late ’90s, you definitely heard the name “Rolf Potts” spoken with sincere reverence in hostels from Ko Sahn road to… well, Ko Phi Phi (80% of the US-UK-AUS backpacking scene seemed centered in Thailand at that time). Potts was the vagabond king and a true digital nomad at a time when the infrastructure for working online was still shaky. Over the years, I’ve had multiple people ask me to send him photos of their tattered copies of his seminal guidebook Vagabonding. His essay “Storming ‘The Beach’” ushered in a new era of young, web-first, propulsive-almost-gonzo travel writing that influenced a generation.
As a world traveler, Potts has slowed down a tad — he bought a farmhouse and got married (in a wonderfully fortuitous story of pandemic love). As a travel writer, whew! My boy hasn’t lost a bit of speed on his fastball (as this Uproxx essay illustrates) and his new book, The Vagabond’s Way, underscores that fact. The book is set up as a series of meditations — travel quotes that Potts reflects on and reacts to. In its sharpest moments, he shares stories from the road, each illustrating the spirit of travel as he sees it.
The result of this formula is a book that’s snackable, weighty, and fun all at once.
BOTTOM LINE:
The premier travel writer of a generation offering travel inspiration in short bursts and fun anecdotes? Sign. Us. Up.
I already waxed philosophic about Roark as a brand, so all I really have to say here is that these shorts fit really nice and come to the exact right spot on the thigh — not so long that I feel like Jalen Rose when he was running with C Webb and not so short that people will be shocked to find out you’re not an Australian rugby player. They’re in the goldilocks zone — perfect for the surf, the sand, and the pool.
Plus they look cool.*
*If you’re looking for swimsuits for women, I can’t recommend OneOne Swimwear highly enough. The fit and fabric is impeccable — I bought some for my lady and she gets lots of compliments!
BOTTOM LINE:
I spent my hard-earned cash on three pairs of this cut — that’s saying something.
The problem with not having a campfire cooking kit is that you’re left completely and utterly to your own devices. Did you remember the spatula? The kettle? The tongs?
The last time I camped without this set, I burned a hole in a much-beloved sweater while using my sleeve as a potholder. Had I had this, it wouldn’t have happened. But more than just preventing your own idiocy, this is a product that can help you cook better over an open flame. The pots have a smaller footprint but they’re deep — allowing you to crowd multiple items onto a grill or set them directly in the coals.
Best of all, by being “all of a piece,” this kit cuts down on your packing time and the stress of double-checking yourself while also making unpacking less of a drag. All wins in my book.
BOTTOM LINE:
Making camping easy is a noble quest and the key to more people savoring our wild spaces.
Traveling with a bike used to be the absolute worst. Roof racks? A nightmare. Things have gotten steadily better and this rack is the next stage of the evolution — convenience meets affordability. For $200, I’m not seeing a better rack on the market — it’s sturdy and easy to use. Those are the bike rack requirements. Not much more needs to be said. Oh, this rack fits e-bikes! Definitely a nice perk. And it generally feels low maintenance. It also stores easily when you’re not using it.
Truth be told, the deterrent of adventure in this world is hassle. People want to do cool shit but we’re also generally lazy and ridiculously overworked. No one wants to wrestle with a bike on what is, in theory, labeled a vacation. That’s where this super convenient rack nails it.
BOTTOM LINE:
The best value in bike racks to get your giftee biking on their next road trip!
This jacket and its companion piece, a more female-focused hoodie is a rich, warm olive, incredibly lightweight, and highly functional. It’s good for an adventure, a night out, and even a nice dinner. It’s pure streetwear with an action sports vibe. Or maybe vice versa. All I know is that the lines and energy of this piece are a lot cooler and more stylish than North Face or Patagonia. It’s also incredibly warming and packs down into a stow bag.
People have been trying to make ultra-versatile puffers for a long time but it’s a tough prospect. This is the one. I feel comfortable wearing it across social situations. Last week I took it camping and wore it over a suit in a single day — it got compliments in both contexts!
BOTTOM LINE:
The most fly puffer in the game right now in a color that is both enduring and very much “of the moment” in streetwear.
A Parks Pass is the best gift because it encourages a spirit of adventure and motivates planning in a major way. No one is going to be bummed about that. In fact, if your friends are anything like mine, you’ll hear about how great the gift is over and over throughout the year.
BOTTOM LINE:
National Parks are “America’s best idea” and maybe its best gift, too!
If you love to travel, you need aviators. That’s just a fact. And those aviators should make you feel cool. Like “Miles Teller and his pilot pals playing football on the beach in Top Gun: Maverick” cool; “Don Draper cool”; Brad Pitt or Wiz Khalifa cool. And I just don’t know about any shades cooler than these Randolphs.
They’re icy and blue and made in white-freaking-gold. They hold to your face beautifully and make you feel stylish in workwear or streetwear.
I am not in the “I buy cheap sunglasses because I lose them” camp. I spend on sunglasses because they are… something of a shield. A separation layer between my internal and external worlds. I like to approach social situations with glasses on. It makes me feel comfortable in my skin. Sure, white gold sunnies are an investment, but they’re in the category of a nice haircut or a great pair of shoes — an investment in your own self-confidence.
BOTTOM LINE:
No sunglasses will make your giftee feel cooler. Period.
This is a camera made for creators. It shoots in 4K, it’s super mobile, and it is sold in tandem with a “Creator’s Accessory Kit” that includes a remote, mic, and tripod. The controls can all face forward so that you don’t need a dedicated filmer and Nikon’s SnapBridge app makes it insanely easy to transfer footage.
We’ve written before about how mirror-less cameras are the ultimate “plug and play” cams but this camera, by fully leaning into creator culture, really owns that — they’re easy and accommodate streaming, selfies, and on-the-fly content that’s a significant jump from what you can do with your phone.
BOTTOM LINE:
If you have a serious traveler in your life, the chances are that they’re creating content. And if they are — and they’re trying to make that content look influencer-level — they’re going to need a serious camera that is equally adept and photos and video. This is that camera. Better still, it’s rugged enough for life on the road.
This is for your dirtbike friend, your surf friend, and your trail-running friend. It’s a camp shower with nice water pressure that will allow you to feel clean as you transfer from a serious adventure to a night out (or even just a dinner where you don’t want to feel grimy). Oh, the festival-hopping friend will also love this one!
As a surfer, I’ve seen a lot of these at San Onofre State Beach — perfect for transitioning from the waves to a sunset barbecue. The water pressure can be hand-pumped and the 4.8-gallon tank gives you plenty of time to get clean.
BOTTOM LINE:
If you care about an adventurous type who longs to stay clean between activities or keep sand out of their cars, this is the product for them.
The sound quality, the construction, the feel, the noise canceling — this is a product made for the road. Every element is form-meets-function, right down to the various adapters to make battery charging a breeze (the 15-minute rapid charge function is so vital for a non-planner like me). But beyond the look and feel and functionality, what is so special about these headphones is the sound. This is the first time I’ve truly felt lost in a soundscape while sitting in coach on a plane. The quality is just so… immersive. You’re able to fully disengage (if that’s how you like to fly) and get lost in the music, a good book, or a podcast.
The first time I put these on, I scrolled straight to my favorite song and heard elements I’d literally never noticed before. We’re talking about my number one track on Spotify for 2022 and these joints made it sound brand new to me! That’s special. It’s the sort of sound that producers and musicians talk about — textured and rich. I fell in love with these very quickly.
BOTTOM LINE:
$1K is a whole heck of a lot for travel headphones. That’s undeniable. But these aren’t just hype — they’re built right, the battery is a 6-hour beast, and the case keeps the whole package together beautifully. They are, to be frank, the travel and work headphones I have on the very top of my personal list. Now… who wants to grab me a pair?
Lizzo accepted the People’s Champion Award from her mother, Shari Johnson-Jefferson, at the 2022 People’s Choice Awards last night (December 6). “When I first heard about this award, I was on the fence about whether I should accept because if I’m the people’s champ, I don’t need a trophy for championing people,” the Special songwriter said to begin her acceptance speech. “To be an icon isn’t about how long you’ve had your platform; being an icon is what you do with that platform.” It’s universally agreed upon that Lizzo used her six-minute People’s Choice platform beautifully.
The Emmy and Grammy winner brought several activists to the stage, naming them all and explaining each woman’s cause — including Jayla Rose, one of her Big Grrrls backup dancers, and Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer. Lizzo held back tears when introducing Maggie Mireles, whose sister, Eva Mireles, died while protecting her students during May’s Uvalde, Texas school shooting.
Lizzo’s speech concluded by urging the audience to “give them their flowers.” Stevie Nicks took to Instagram today (December 7) to give Lizzo flowers with an open letter.
“In my opinion~ your presentation last night on the People’s Choice Awards was not only so beautiful and so needed~ that you get the award for being a great woman of our time,” Nicks’s post reads. “I was so impressed and so touched that you put that together and pulled it off. It was stunning~ and everyone heard you. You have given all women soundbites forever~ flute player, singer, songwriter, future politician…? Your name is in the stars now.”
Editor’s Note: If you are having thoughts about taking your own life, or know of anyone who is in need of help, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is a United States-based suicide prevention network of over 200+ crisis centers that provides 24/7 service via a toll-free hotline with the number 9-8-8. It is available to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress.
It’s an unspoken rule that children of politicians should be off limits when it comes to public figure status. Kids deserve the ability to simply be kids without the media picking them apart. We saw this during Obama’s presidency when people from both ends of the political spectrum come out to defend Malia and Sasha Obama’s privacy and again when a reporter made a remark about Barron Trump.
This is even more important when we are talking about a child’s mental health, so seeing detailed reports about Ted Cruz’s 14-year-old child’s private mental health crisis was offputting, to say it kindly. It feels icky for me to even put the senator’s name in this article because it feels like adding to this child’s exposure.
When a child is struggling with mental health concerns, the instinct should be to cocoon them in safety, not to highlight the details or speculate on the cause. Ever since the news broke about this child’s mental health, social media has been abuzz, mostly attacking the parents and speculating if the child is a member of the LGBTQ community.
Cruz’s child should not have to have her most vulnerable moment broadcasted around the globe. Adolescent children are notoriously private and may easily feel embarrassment or shame, except they generally have far less tools to know how to cope. The media listing so much information about the child’s attempt at self-harm will likely do more harm than anything else thanks to a teen’s proclivity to feel shame.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people aged 15-24 and nearly 20% of high school students have seriously contemplated suicide, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Kids that are LGBTQ are more than four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers that are not a part of the LGBTQ community, according to The Trevor Project. It’s clear that mental health issues that lead to either attempted or completed suicide are not relegated to a certain political party’s children. It’s a widespread issue plaguing parents and mental health professionals across the country.
If you couple the shame aspect with the stigma surrounding mental health, you’re creating a recipe for disaster. We’re talking about a teenager who has to go to school with peers who know who her father is. This isn’t some unnamed child that no one would put the pieces together on. Once you name the politician and state the age and gender of the child, there’s no mistaking who you’re talking about.
Reporters aren’t bound by HIPAA laws and there’s not always a regard for protecting someone’s privacy if the story is salacious enough. That’s not to say that people who report the news are intent on hurting children, it’s that sometimes we don’t always think about the person on the other side of the story, especially the parents of a hurting child who will have to deal with the consequences of the report.
Media and consumers should use this moment to take a step back and look at how we view children of politicians and celebrities. Should they really be a commodity because their parents chose a public career? Should we disregard the very real pressure these kids are under to report intimate details of a tragic event? Or should we simply remember they’re children and didn’t ask for their moments of weakness to be laid out on display for the world?
I personally believe we should allow them to be children and we should remember what it was like at their age so we can fully appreciate how they might feel seeing their private suffering out in the world. I’m not saying not to report, I’m saying use discretion. A simple blurb that said, “One of Senator Cruz’s children has been injured and taken to the hospital, but they are expected to make a full recovery,” would have been plenty of information.
The world didn’t need the details, and hopefully if something like this happens in the future to a family in the spotlight, the media will do a better job at protecting the child’s privacy. Here’s wishing Cruz’s child a speedy recovery and future mental wellness.
The famous hip-hop festival Rolling Loud keeps expanding. It started off in Miami, Florida in 2015, then added cities in California in 2017. Two years later, they added Sydney, Australia and New York City. They didn’t stop there — then came Toronto, The Netherlands, and Portugal.
The latest location is now Rolling Loud Rotterdam, which will take place at Rotterdam Ahoy in Amsterdam from June 30 to July 1, 2023. The lineup is nothing short of exciting. Only the headliners have been announced so far, which are Travis Scott and Kendrick Lamar. Pre-sale tickets are available now on the festival’s website.
“The Buzbee Law Firm announced today that the claims brought by the family of Axel Acosta against Travis Scott, Live Nation, and others involved in the Astroworld tragedy have settled,” a press release read. “Victim Axel Acosta was a beloved son, brother, and student. He was kind and loving. He is greatly missed. Please keep his family in your prayers.”
Long ago, in the era before Netflix, it was a big deal when a blockbuster aired on broadcast television. The major networks would pay a fortune for the rights. There would be an ad blitz. It was an event. That doesn’t happen so much anymore, what with streaming and whatnot. Indeed, few noticed that Avatar — the highest grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation) — never took the broadcast TV route. Until now.
As per Deadline, this coming Sunday night, Dec. 11 — a handful of days before its belated sequel The Way of Water hits multiplexes — the original Avatar will air on ABC. It’s a long movie, albeit not as long as its follow-up, which is super duper long. That’s why it’s starting early, at 7pm, to fit in all three-thousand hours of blue people mayhem, with commercials. (The broadcast is set to end at 10:30pm.)
ABC isn’t the only place one can watch Avatar the old fashioned TV way. It will also play on FX twice, on both Thursday, Dec. 15, on Sunday, Dec. 18, both starting at 8pm. On Monday, Dec. 26, it will play Freeform, starting at 7:30pm. (For Roku/Amazon Stick folks, it’s probably surreal thinking about planning your schedule around a movie set to air at a fixed time. That’s to say nothing of all those commercials, which add some 48 minutes to the running time.)
How will a movie designed to be played on the biggest screen imaginable, seen through giant 3-D glasses, play on a small screen, in the wrong aspect ratio, with ad breaks? You could find out — or you could stream it on Disney+, where it exclusively lives.
The full schedule for Avatar airings can be below:
A year removed from being the 1-seed in the East and falling one game short of the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat have not been able to replicate that success. After an offseason that saw them make no major additions and lose PJ Tucker, they have scuffled to an 11-14 start, which currently has them 11th in the East.
It is a team that does not have a great deal of depth and with Jimmy Butler missing 10 games and Tyler Herro missing eight, the issues of roster construction have been particularly noticeable. After getting smoked by the Pistons on Tuesday night in a 116-96 loss (again, without Butler), the TNT crew discussed Miami’s future and Charles Barkley very bluntly suggested it’s time to blow it up and start over.
Charles Barkley on the Miami Heat: “It might be time to break the team up and start over.” pic.twitter.com/GdOzAwLvDP
“It might be time to break the team up and start over,” Barkley said. “They got some contracts that’s gonna be, like, they’re no good. So they need to start over. That’s my personal opinion. It’s like, hey, trade some of these guys to contenders or teams that get us some young guys and start over.”
Shaq agreed with the assessment of some of the contracts on the roster, noting they’ll be “hard to get rid of.” The contract that stands out, of course, is Duncan Robinson’s, as he is in the second year of a 5-year, $90 million extension that has looked like one of the worst deals in the league. Beyond Robinson, Kyle Lowry has another year left on his 3-year, $90 million deal signed in 2021 and he has seen a dropoff from his All-Star caliber play in Toronto, averaging 14.4 points and 6.0 assists per game this season after some playoff struggles a year ago.
Miami has never been a team willing to tank and has always rewarded its own guys with big extensions, for better or worse (see: Tyler Johnson), so I doubt Pat Riley is going to take Chuck’s words to heart. That said, it does seem fairly clear this is not a contender as currently constructed, even if they can get Bam Adebayo, Butler, and Herro all on the floor together. The question is, what can they do to amplify that core group without much in the way of intriguing talent to move off of, but it’d be fairly surprising if they aren’t at least active in exploring what the trade market has to offer when trade season starts in earnest on December 15.
Odds are you’ve probably seen those Lensa AI avatars floating around social media. You know, the app that turns even the most basic of selfies into fantasy art masterpieces? I wouldn’t be surprised if you have your own series of images filling up your photo bank right now. Who wouldn’t want to see themselves looking like a badass video game character or magical fairy alien?
While getting these images might seem like a bit of innocent, inexpensive fun, many are unaware that it comes at a heavy price to real digital artists whose work has been copied to make it happen. A now-viral Facebook and Instagram post, made by a couple of digital illustrators, explains how.
In a very thorough series of slides, Gen Ishihara and her fiance Jon Lam reveal that Lensa is easily able to render those professional looking images by using a Stable Diffusion model, which is more or less an open source (meaning free) program where users can type in a series of words and artificial intelligence will conjure up images based on those typed words. Type out a group of seemingly unrelated words like “ethereal,” “cat,” “comic style” and “rainbow,” and out will pop at least one cohesive, intricate piece of art. All in less than a minute. This foundation is what most mainstream AI art software operates on, by the way—not just Lensa.
The problem here is that Stable Diffusion has been trained on yet another open source collection of data from a nonprofit called LAION. LAION has more than 5 billion publicly accessible images. If you can find it online, LAION has a picture of it, categorized as “research.”
Not only does this include copyrighted work, but also personal medical records, as well as disturbing images of violence and sexual abuse. But for the sake of not delving too far into darkness, we’ll focus on the copyright issue.
While LAION might be a nonprofit, Stable Diffusion is valued at $1 billion. And Lensa (which uses Stable Diffusion) has so far earned $29 million in consumer spending. Meanwhile, artists whose work can be found in that database have made zero.
“The Lensa app is a great way to get the general public comfortable with using the software and turn a blind eye to how the data was collected. The technology is so new that laws have not caught up with AI tech yet. But that doesn’t make it okay,” the post read.
Ishihara and Lam listed real artists who have been affected by Lensa’s use of data laundering, including Greg Rutkowski, whose “name has been used as a prompt around 93,000 times.” He even had his name attached to a piece of AI art that he did not create. Again, simply type in “Greg Rutkowski” along with whatever thing you want illustrated, and the program will create something drawn in his style.
You can see why someone who dedicated a good portion of their life to developing a skill that now can be replicated at a fraction of the effort—and without earning compensation—might not be a huge fan of these trends.
The post then followed up by debunking several pro-AI statements, first pointing out that AI programs are being updated and improved so fast that distinguishing it from the work of human art is becoming impossible—meaning that it does in fact threaten the livelihood of a real artist who simply cannot compete with a machine.
Also shown was a poster created in Midjourney to promote the San Francisco Ballet’s upcoming “Nutcracker” performance, showing that AI media has indeed already begun to replace human jobs.
One of the most common arguments in the AI debate is that all art is derivative, since artists similarly draw inspiration from other sources. While this is true, Ishihara and Lam would contend that the organic process of blending “reference material, personal taste and life experiences to inform artistic decisions” is vastly different than a computer program depending on data that is existing artistic property and then used for commercial purposes without consent.
Adding further credibility to this viewpoint, there’s another post floating around the internet showing Lensa portraits where a warped version of the artist’s signature is still visible (seen below).
I’m cropping these for privacy reasons/because I’m not trying to call out any one individual. These are all Lensa portraits where the mangled remains of an artist’s signature is still visible. That’s the remains of the signature of one of the multiple artists it stole from.
Rather than doing away with AI art altogether, what Ishihara, Lam and others are pushing for are better regulations for companies that allow for this technology to coexist with human artists.
This might be easier said than done, but some progress has already been made in that arena. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), for example, has begun demanding that corporations destroy any algorithm or AI models built using personal information or data collected “in bad faith or illegally.”
Second, they want people to educate themselves. Several other artists agreed that people who have used apps like Lensa aren’t wrong for doing so, but that moving forward there needs to be awareness of how it affects real people. Really, this is pretty much the case for all seemingly miraculous advancements in technology.
And for the creators feeling hopeless by all this, Ishihara and Lam say “whatever you do, don’t stop creating,” adding that it’s more important than ever to not “give up on what you love.”
The conversation around the ethical implications of AI is complex. While posts like these might come across as a form of fear-mongering or finger-wagging, it’s important to gather multiple points of view in order to engage in nuanced conversations and move forward in a way that includes everyone’s well-being.
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