Generative artificial intelligence

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Generative AI, also referred to as GenAI or simply AI, is a program whose existence is to generate pieces of media based on a simple prompt (e.g. "How long do I heat popcorn for in the microwave?" or "bowl of buttery popcorn, realistic, artstation, pretty") with various and random results. GenAI over its currently short existence being accessible to the public has garnered large amounts of concern across the various fields it has been applied to.

General controversies surrounding generative AI

Controversy	Brief Description	Related Article(s)/Section(s)
Training data collected without consent	Various platforms have scraped data ranging within the petabytes concerning content created by users and potentially owned by companies, without first obtaining an adequate license to use this data. This has gone so far as to not even request consent or even notifying users in advance that their content was used to train AI-powered tools.
Replacing skilled workers with AI	Due to its generalized nature, jobs across fields from digital art to writing and programming have had experienced staff replaced by lesser-paid (and often lesser-experienced) employees who would be tasked to use generative tools to do their work. To remain relevant to the wiki's purpose, the usage leads to the detriment of product quality for consumers, such as representatives replaced with chatbots, or products being sold by companies use poorly-generated content that may harm the consumer.

Specific controversies involving generative AI

Reddit training AI on posts

In late 2024, Reddit announced the release of 'Reddit Answers,' a large language model (LLM) that was publicly stated to use content created by users to train the tool, without requiring prior consent or prior public notice.

DeviantArt DreamUp

While more speculative, it is reasonable for users to assume that when DeviantArt initially automatically opted all users into allowing their work to be training data for generative AI, that all content uploaded to DeviantArt was used as training data for their DreamUp tool, however according to statements from DeviantArt CEO Moti Levy, DeviantArt did not plan or intend to train their tool based on user-generated works and that any user-generated works that were used in their model, were introduced by StabilityAI. Regardless, the introduction of DreamUp to the art sharing platform has both stirred controversy on the platform, and also fractured the platform into 2 parties, those for generative AI (typically those who hold newer accounts) and those against (typically users who have existed on the platform for far longer.) Due to the introduction of DreamUp, the platform has been cluttered by AI generated images, and staff have historically, frequently, and intentionally featured multiple users who exclusively upload GenAI content or post content that uses generative content as a base, with a majority of featured creators being ones who nearly or exclusively upload AI generated content.

LAION-5b training database

Many users have had their content scraped by LAION to power their training database, and the only way they can opt out is via a third party.

STACKOVERFLOW training data

In mid 2023, StackOverflow released Overflow AI which uses all users questions and answers for their neural network that they charge enterprises for. Despite their strong stance on Generated AI Post Policy they still require users to not generate AI responses despite scraping your human content for profit. As of now there still is no official way to opt out officially other than deleting all your posts/topics manually before permanently deleting your account. But even then their Get Out Clause still allows them to use it even after you thought you deleted it. They have completely burned their bridge of privacy and user trust for the platform and brand and the users content that the site was built by.

Microsofts Github Copilot training on free user repos

According to this Copilot FAQ topic it will not train on people that are on PRO or ENTERPRISE plans but says nothing about the people using Github under a free account. With that being said we can assume that any and all accounts that copilot is in currently is being used to further train the model. As creators credit is the least you could do; especially if your profiting off work that is not in fact yours. Your platform is supposed to give people an alternative to price tag software and the passionate hobbyists that modify, scrutinize, and improve a project for the community. Instead you have eroded Users Trust in your platform by choosing profits over people.