Feed me!

If you're an artist online or follow a few you may have heard about the mass exodus from Instagram (IG) the past week. The news even reached me, despite living under a rock! IG updated their EULA and blatantly grabbed the rights to scrape anything and everything on the platform to train their generative models. It's possible to submit a request to opt out, but you'll likely get refused unless you're an EU citizen where the privacy laws will back you up, and yet you still have to prove you're part of the training set (!!?). Besides, anything they've already digested into their model is "impossible" to remove (a.k.a a bit too expensive to be worth the trouble), so it's only applied to your future uploads.

The artist-focused and AI adverse contender Cara was in the perfect place to receive all these lost souls... and boooy, 700'000 and counting has made the jump in a week. It even lured me to have a look, but many of the reasons why I quit social media still apply even here, and perhaps Cara adds a few faults of its own. My website and newsletter is still and will continue to be my home. Never the less, I'm really happy that Meta gets a good slap to the face.

Perhaps today's illustration is on point then: A manipulative monster with a ferocious appetite!

FEED ME, SEYMOUR!

I'm pretty happy with my output despite all the distractions this week; Social media chaos, EU elections (GO VOTE TODAY) and overbearing anxiety about life stuff. Retreating into creativity is such a reprieve, especially when it's entirely for your own work. Making dumb shit and just having fun without a care.

That's all folks! Stay vigilant, stay creative, stay human!

Published 9 Jun 2024

Thanks for reading!