No that’s not how it works. AI models don’t carry a repository of images. They use algorithms. The model itself is a few gigabytes where as the training data would be petabytes - far larger than I could fit on my home desktop running stable diffusion.

It actually is close to how humans do it. You’re thinking “it’s copying that image” and it’s not. It’s using algorithms to create an image in a similar style. It knows different artistic styles because it has been fed a repository of millions of images in that style and can generate similar images in that style.

As for copyright, it was recently all over social media that AI could copy studio ghibli’s art style. To the rage of social media and their fanbase, this is allowed. Studio Ghibli can’t copyright an art style, and that’s why AI image generators continue to include the option to generate art in that art style.

It’s not an issue to me, and is completely befuddling to begin with. Training an AI on copyrighted material doesn’t mean the AI violates that material when it generates new artwork. AI models don’t contain a copy of all the works they were trained on - which could be petabytes of data. They reduce what they learned to math algorithms and use those algorithms to generate new stuff.

Humans work much the same way. We are all exposed to copyrighted material all the time, and when we create new artwork a lot of the ideas churning inside our heads originate from other people’s works. When a human artist draws a mouse man smiling and whistling a tune, for some reason it’s not considered a copyright violation as long as it doesn’t strictly resemble mickey mouse. But when an AI generates a mouse man smiling and whistling a tune? Suddenly the anti-AI crowd points at it and screams about it violating Disney IP.

It’s not an issue. It never was. AI training is a strawman argument manufactured by the anti-AI crowd to justify their hatred of AI. If you created an AI trained on public domain stuff, they would still hate it. They would just clutch at some other reason.

That’s weasel speak. Hiding behind a user agreement is a pathetic excuse for bad behavior on the part of the developer. The developer decides what is in that agreement. It can be changed at any time, and 'but you agreed to this" is a poor excuse for laziness and disrespect for the community that supported them for so many years.

Transitioning the game into an offline mode could be done with some development time spent on a final update. Take out the multiplayer stuff, let the game run offline, and put the game up for sale as an idler for like $5 or $10. It might not make much money but it lets players continue to play a game that they love. It shows that you as a developer care about your product and the customers who have supported you for so long.

This is a good question. I live in the USA and most fundraisers are for clubs, sports, and extracurricular activities. But we spend so much $ for our kids schooling, and I believe in other countries like Japan the school will actually give clubs money to spend on supplies, so they don’t need to do this. Why are our schools so expensive and give so little back to the students?

Also our teachers are underpaid for the work they do. So are the support staff. Cleaners, IT, all underpaid.

Do you know who isn’t underpaid? The administrators. Our schools have district offices with lots of overpaid administrators. I work in IT at a school and I make the same as the cleaners do. I can’t afford a car, and live in a trailer park. During the last round of contract negotiations, the superintendent negotiated a 7% annual raise on top of his already six-figure salary. My group? We got 2.5% which was less than inflation. It was during COVID and inflation was about 7%.

Where is all the money going? Look at the district offices. We have a problem with corruption in this country. Everyone wants to be a feudal lord and rule over the serfs. All our money is going to create and prop up an aristocracy, which has so far managed to hide itself from public view. We need to shed light on the aristocrats.

This is true. I’ve been grieving the loss of Isekai Demon Waifu, which shut down only a few days ago on the 19th of this month. I had been playing it over 3 years, and had unlocked most of the girls, become the #1 on my server, and had grown attached to seeing my harem girls every night when I play the game before bed. I missed the server shutdown notification and I was messed up the next day. It hit me hard.

I hope there is another harem game with succubi and monster girls. IDW had a lot of charm. The music, art style, aesthetic. Amazing monster girls. I’m going to miss seeing Ephinas, Fiadum, Hastia, Scardia, Palotti, Ymir, and all the others.

It doesn’t seem fair that we can spend years of our life, hundreds or even thousands of dollars, make a game experience part of our lives, and then one day it just goes poof and it’s all gone. Part of you vanishes in that moment. It’s like a bandaid being ripped off a wound, or a light in your life going out. Because someone else decided it cost too much to keep a server running?

They should be required to transition the game into an offline mode!