Just read through this post and I can speak with authority since we were WOTD yesterday, there was no noticable financial gain from the honor

mFeelzGood's post did leave me with a question, do posts made on groups show up on your post history like regular forum posts do? I ask this because I know our photo dump in a post promoting positivity probably led to us getting WOTD. I spend a good chunk of my free time on here so I tend to know the username of regular users. Didn't recognize the name piedjess so I clicked the link and noticed that the reason I don't know the name is because she has never made a forum post. I don't really follow the groups though and figured maybe she is active there and those posts are considered different. Thanks for any insight

-JD

Yes it does . I posted in the AI Wam group, and those posts show up in my forum history. I also made my account public to see my rank grow a little from loves on images that posted there.

I no longer post in that group, so it is early in my history. I did consider posting synthetic images to my personal album because I think those would give me a higher rank . (jokingly)

I think People images should contain images of real people. When I look at People, I tend to want to look at people. It bugs me that synthetic images still show up under https://umd.net/people when looking at the "Recent user pics" section even though I have the synthetic option set to "natural".

That gave me the idea though that a user profile could have a section for Art... The synthetic tag and label works fine though.

I can't speak as a producer or for producers, but here's my two cents.

AI is kind of neat, you can prompt out anything you want with scenarios and costumes and characters, but you can spend all day trying to get something decent to pop up out of your prompts...but like 99% of the time, that one decent thing will never compare to the real thing.

Some people are better at it than others, and maybe they can accept AI generated content as better than the real thing, but I don't think the majority of people are like that.

AI is still kind of flawed, it misinterprets things...which can be pretty funny and fun if you're doing really random stuff, but even then when you get in that mode where you're like "I want a Mandalorian Deadpool with a chicken jet pack shooting man eating tacos..." you spend a bit of time trying to get somewhere near to what you envisioned...

I collect art, and AI for some could mean "Now I don't have to pay artists!" but that's not the case at all with me. I'm still going to conventions and paying artists to physically draw stuff for me. Lots of people are. A lot of them artist's slots fill up mighty fast.

Admittedly I'm kind of bad with WAM content, I don't buy as many scenes as I could, there are tons I want to, but I'm like "I have this huge back catalog of stuff that I've bought over the past vicennium, I can hold off for a while...plus I need that money for art..." Eventually I end up buying a few scenes here and there, but all that's got nothing to do with AI.

Sorry Wam Bagheera, I gotta get something from you one of these days...

When trying to project what the future will be like, it is best to avoid words like "never" or "definitely". If you step back in history and examine what it would be like to try to predict the future accurately from that point, you will find that though there are indeed trends that were likely to lead in one direction, only those trends that hindsight proved to be the future get noticed, not the ones that did not come to be. For example, if you are old enough, perhaps you can identify with "dude, where's my jet pack" and "why haven't they got those teleporter thingys working yet"...

AI has the potential to be able to replicate what a human can create and part of the reason for that is that it is possible that AI may achieve a consciousness equivalent to that of a human. So, when discussing any future involving AI, it is best to confine your predictions to a specific length of time, say a decade, or two, or until some particular technical challenge has been overcome. At the moment I am comfortable prognosticating that for the next decade, AI will will remain in the "uncanny valley" phase, meaning, a human can not only tell something is AI but that the closer the AI comes to looking real, the creepier it looks and feels to a human observer...

If you follow the cutting edge of AI and robotics, then you are aware that we have entered a new phase of AI development that was foreseen half a century ago in Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy with the concept of "42" where the answer is 42 but the question is not known. That is now occurring routinely, AI learns on its own and solves problems on its own and then presents an answer that is more effective than any answer that had been previously developed without AI. The problem is, we do not know exactly how the AI solved the problem so well which means humans are already losing full control over AI to some extent...

Most of the history of human technological developement proceeded in a somewhat linear fashion while basically awaiting the occasional big jump forward like the development of fire or agriculture. However, the closer one gets to today, the more development has accelerated to become proportional instead of linear thereby making it much more difficult to project the future with some accuracy...

AI could do many things, both positive and negative for humans, in the future. For instance, once AI is past the "uncanny valley" phase, knowing what is AI generated and what is not will require much more thought. Some of that is already emerging with respect to communication that does not occur in person...

Note that once AI advances sufficiently, it will be eagerly embraced by both producers and consumers because it will make it quicker and cheaper to film certain types of scenes and to get them right and to obtain results that are largely due to fortunate circumstances occurring. I've made a lot of mud videos but it has always been a very rare event when the model does exactly what I want done and the lighting is just right and the mud conditions are just right and the mud plops at just the right time while the lightning bolt in the storm passing the quarry strikes that tree...

With respect to the Wammer of the Day statistic, surely it is obvious that there is no one way to calculate it that would not advantage some at the expense of someone else or to make all happy? The only certain way to remove that computational bias is to not calculate the statistic, that is, do away with that feature. And where's the fun in that?...

An alternative way of getting past this Wammer of the Day issue would be to create another statistic or two using a different set of criteria. Something other than a winner takes all approach perhaps?...

Sooooo not to belabor the point, but this sounds an awful lot like the line of reasoning that I was trying to discuss above. In particular, do you really think that people always *eagerly embrace* cheaper solutions? Or do you think that there might be some element of hesitation, unwillingness, compromise, or acquiescence?

I mean, it sure sounds like you're into the idea of using AI in your own work, and I get that. Some people are. But at least one producer in this thread has said that they're not into it at all, and another seemed to indicate that he thought it belonged in a totally separate category. To me, that doesn't sound like people who are setting themselves up for an eager embrace. So like... I guess I'm confused about how you're looking at those posts and thinking to yourself, "It doesn't matter what they think now, they'll come around once the tech is good enough."

The "tech" for almost perfect WAM vids already exists. We are just not privy to it...yet.

I say "almost" because it still has a few hiccups. But at some point in the next few years we will have the "Holodeck" of WAM vids, the ability to create virtually anything we want and those vids will be virtually indistinguishable from what we see today from producers.

That's the reality.

Then, will come the reality of being able to insert ourselves into those videos.

You can call me,

Al

I don't utilize AI, but calling my work 'synthetic', since it's computer-generated animation, would be accurate. I do feel like there's an imbalance in production challenges (no prep/cleanup, no space needed, the ability churn out content - of varying degrees of quality - faster and cheaper), but there's nothing, in my humble opinion, that surpasses IRL work. Everything else, my own work included, is a pale attempt at recreating the real deal. It's effectively pieing/sliming an action figure or cartoon, however detailed they may be, and there's an inherent limit there.

Take my opinion as just that - my own opinion. I just really, really hope that the declining cost of entry into synthetic/AI-generated content doesn't drive out or disillusion content producers who make the effort to produce real-world works for everyone to enjoy.

I would never use AI in my own videos, I've no desire to go through having to learn to use whatever new software is involved. And therein is the answer to whether producers and customers eagerly embrace cheaper solutions...

The answer is generational, the younger you are, the more likely you will immediately adopt new technology. The old you are, the more likely you are to delay in adopting or to never adopt. I still use a flip top cell phone, ancient video editing software on ancient computers, and only watch basic DVD format with no concern for any high resolutions possible or streaming options...

And far be it from me to mind belaboring a point, in fact, I often don't mind beating a death horse, after all, the horse doesn't mind!...

AI wam is to produced wam what a racing game is to driving a Ferrari.

Shit analogy, actually. The point is, real wam isnt going anywhere.

UNCANNY VALLEY

Grimy, dimly lit bathroom with reluctantly consenting spouse.

I think the worst of 'real' WAM photos is worse that the worst of synthetic WAM photos, but that seems to be just me.

I agree

The thing to realise about AI wam (and indeed, AI erotica in general): How it is now is the worst it will ever be. It can only improve, and the vast improvement in quality between last year and now gives an idea of just how fast it will develop.

There is also "audience reception" to consider. Most of the current audience still seem to prefer "I know this happened to a breathing human" real WAM. But! Just as there is now a generation that never knew the world before the Internet and always-on connectivity, soon there will be a generation that never knew the world before AI and generative art. They may well see things differently to those of us who knew the before times.

As to the original question in the thread, what will happen to WAM producers, well that will entirely depend on what the market does. If people stop buying, productions will slow down, producers will quit the business, and the availability of "real WAM" will die away to mostly just what's produced by enthusiasts for free, perhaps with the very occasional commercial release. But at the same time, if sales die off then eventually UMD will cease to be viable, at which point lots if existing stores will cease to exist.

TL;DR - if you want "real wam" to continue, keep supporting the producers who create it, by buying their scenes.

No! Why, you may ask? Because I won't BUY any AI stuff. I do buy your stuff, Bagheera, and will continue to do so. HA!

I am happy for those who want to make AI stuff, but it is not the same, nor will it ever be the same. AI is not even as good as a good WAM story, because they did not put any real effort into creating a story.

I'll always be here for you, Bagheera, and for all my messy friends.

HA! And another thing that I didn't even to think of at the time, the AI people never really get a girl totally messy. Very seldom do I see the face of the girl get messy. I have heard that is difficult to do, but still, it takes away from the scene or picture.

It's not that difficult, you just need to know what you are doing. Here's an AI girl with a messy face.

Well, yeah, there is some mess on her face.

I'm not sure about that, for a couple of reasons.

a) Some technologies peak early, and never catch on. E.g. "Jaws 3-D" came out in 1983. Have 3D films really changed much in the past 40 years? At best, some producers are better at using it subtly (e.g. "Gravity") rather than "Here are the characters poking a stick towards the audience". I think it's been a standard feature in TVs for the last 10 years or so, but does anyone ever watch a 3D film at home?

b) A lot of the "AI" stuff I've seen (and I'm not convinced that it really deserves that name), either text or photo, is based on plagiarising human content. Once it starts being trained on other AI output, the quality goes downhill very quickly.

Edit: Just to expand on my point about 3D, look at other innovations of the past.

* When the "talkies" were introduced, they pretty much eliminated silent films. I sometimes see short videos on YouTube done in the silent style (with caption screens for dialogue) but that's specifically done to make people think of the old style films, and it's rare.

* When colour was introduced, that pretty much eliminated black and white films. There are a few films done in B&W (for artistic reasons), but again it's very rare. B&W was more common in comics (to keep costs down) but that's less of an issue when people read comics digitally.

So, when 3D was introduced, why didn't 2D become a quaint anachronism of the past? And if it didn't become dominant, why are people convinced that AI is the shape of things to come?

Maybe it's me hoping, but I'd like to think once the newness of AI wears off most people will want to see actual people participating in WAM. I have zero interest in AI or cartoon WAM, never have and never will. If that's your thing great, but I like the real deal.

Surely it doesn't help that 3D technology only makes stuff marginally better, if indeed it's better at all. In other words, it's hard to imagine there being a groundswell of support for 3D among consumers (demand). With machine generation, on the other hand, there is a groundswell--it's just primarily on the producer (supply) side, which alters the playing field drastically.

The current dream, as you probably already know, is for corporations to fire every living human being and replace them all with cheaper, union-proof machines. AI is nowhere (N O W H E R E) near that point yet and may never get there, but the point is that 3D was in a totally different category to begin with. At least in theory, 3D was an actual attempt to make a better product. AI is an attempt to build a perpetual profit machine, and if the product suffers then fuck the product. I say this because this helps to explain why corporations (producers, suppliers) are lining up behind AI in a way that they never lined up behind 3D. (The other major piece of the puzzle is that 3D originated well before the current "disrupt"/monopolize/price-gouge business sequence. So when 3D failed to show immediate promise/profit, there was no long-term vision that could encourage businesses to keep pushing it anyway.)

Of course, none of that is the real reason people are buying the hype. People are buying the hype because the hype is a comforting story that only requires people to passively participate. The alternative, as I've just sketched out, is for people to (a) learn things about economics and history, (b) give a shit about what they've learned, and (c) try to make thoughtful decisions based on what they've learned. All of that stuff is hard and scary. It's much easier to just play with the new toy and trust that the megalomaniacs who built it know what they're doing.

........and that concludes your Techno-Economic Analysis portion of the evening. You may now return to your regularly scheduled masturbation

Yeah, this. +1 to all of this.

Look at how Sports Illustrated was killed by profit-focused executives pushing AI, for the most extreme example.

I've seen AI do just fine for "good enough" tasks. Writing shitty clickbait emails is, well, shitty to do by hand. AI cuts out that crap time....but the end result is still clickbait.

The LLMs are word salad generators, and the image generators are cool but after a few attempts you can see how the outputs all share certain similarities. I have been working diligently to get them to create stuff, but after awhile you really start to see the limitations.

The profit mongers are saying "if you're not using AI, you'll be left in the dust" or there are idiots on LinkedIn saying, "ChatGPT just killed Excel"...but never mind that they've been saying that for a year, it hasn't happened, and Microsoft owns a huge controlling interest in OpenAI so they're not gonna develop a product that kills one of their flagship products without a good backup plan.

Lately I've noticed the rhetoric shifting in some trade publications, because big companies are buying big AI products and seeing no return on investment except in narrow, specific use cases. Meanwhile, short sighted companies, like the Sports Illustrated case, are realizing they can't just do everything with AI.

Most of my apps with AI built in have actually gotten noticeably worse, IMHO. My Spotify auto generated playlists have gone way downhill, my AI assisted autocorrect on my phone has gone off the deep end, etc etc.

It'll be here to stay, and there are some cool uses, like the translation tools OpenAI debuted last week, but IMHO but it'll be an augmentation to current applications.

Doesn't mean people aren't gonna hurt as companies try to squeeze value out of it, but that's companies being companies.

It's difficult to do, but can be done ...

Regarding the overall topic, I feel this is difficult to answer as of yet. Generative AI is still pretty new and allthough I strongly believe it will only get better from here on out, it will also get more difficult to get predictable and worthwhile results out of it. And this will come at a cost, also for the AI producer (license fees, time). Sure it's easy to mass-produce images on Bing with only time needed for trial-error prompting, but there's a limit to the level of detail and realism you can achieve currently. For better result you have to combine tools and finetune the outcome (e.g. with photoshop) to get rid of the worst haluzinations of the AI.

For me AI is more of a creative tool that lets me explore setting and characters I will never be able to get in front of my camera. I am honestly impressed by the countless ideas and fantasies that AI let's people create, it gives a lot of insight on preferences, important details and basically what makes WAM klick for one or another.

And while many will still prefer the real thing - which I do myself - AI is here to stay and it will also have its market. I started with photography as a producer. Many told me in the beginning, that wpuldn't work, people will only buy videos. Well turned out, photography worked and got my little production endevaour going. Today I would not rule out that I will sell a whole AI generated photoset on my webpage as well. But if do, generating it will have cost me at least as much time and money as to produce a real WAM photoset.

This pic had a perfect facial coverage. Normally, AI only covers a part of the face and the woman looks happy on the images, which keeps the images not so realistic.
In the pic you posted, the facial coverage is very much more realistic, and better.
I'm trying to do some experiences in AI, but the results are still bad for me. Probably, because for AI, it's not natural a face of a woman get covered by cake or pie.
This means we'll have to do hard jobs on prompts until get the results we are looking for.

In this sense, it isn't artificial intelligence. It's machine learning. It's learning from images and videos posted on the Internet. It can only use what it has access to, so it all looks the same.

So, if producers stop making images and videos...

I believe AI images can be helpful in communicating to custom producers exactly what you're looking for in a scene.

Rather than write numerous paragraphs in exhaustive detail, you can submit an AI image and say "Give me This."

First of all, I'm a supporter of many video producers over the years, buying a lot of messy content.

I cannot afford a custom (and the one time I paid for one, the producer didn't follow my directions as they had to be able to sell it publicly)

So I create AI wam images. I prefer video, but I'll take what I can make! No, it's not as good as the real thing, but it's a lot closer to what I like that what I have been able to find. I have a very specific taste and preference in wam, and seldom find it in videos or images, and as I said, the one custom I had done did not result in what I had asked for, so I'm put off of getting another done, plus financial restraints stop me)

So I can use AI to fulfill those dreams, even if the image isn't perfect. I can flood a living room with specific mess, and have a specific-looking model wear what I choose, do what I choose, and appear to respond the way I choose. In real life, the destruction, and cost of supplies would make it impractical to shoot. With AI, my imagination can go wild.

Again though, I must say I prefer the real thing, but have a very hard time trying to find it. It would not be practical to shoot.

On behalf of everyone you've supported, many thanks!


That absolutely makes my blood boil. The whole point of customs is that you charge the customer the full price + profit margin for shooting the scene, and you do it ***EXACTLY*** the way the customer wants. No changes to make it "more saleable", that flies in the face of everything customs are about. Anyone doing that is betraying the whole concept and scamming their customers. No excuse.

A good producer might suggest things the customer may not have considered, to make it even more theirs - and those suggestions should always be optional - but other than that, a custom video should be done as the customer specifies.


I think in these debates a lot of people are arguing what they want to happen, rather than what will really happen. As a business colleague of mine who works in the AI field likes to put it, "right now is the worst it'll ever be". The rate of progress is spectacular, and shows no sign of slowing down, no matter how much the naysayers try and poo-poo it. Unlike my colleague I don't actually think it's going to obliterate human-made scenes overnight, simply becaus there's a huge amount of momentum in the existing business setup. But anyone who doesn't think it's going to cause enormous changes is, frankly, asleep at the wheel. Going to my favourite comparison with the development of the steam engine - we've gone from "Puffing Billy" to "Rocket" in one year (the real ones took 17 years). And we ain't seen nothing yet.

I prefer wam where the viewer and the producer share mess together

AI never gets to the second part