Libby’s Scribb1es

'Sup, Dudes!?

If you're confused about why this comic is what it is…Well, first of all, have you never read Libby Sk8er Girl before? Second of all, as my T-shirt might imply, this comic ties-in with last Sunday's Polarnoids. But, as is specified in that comic's secret text, the Anna depicted there is NOT Anna Log! (Anna's a pretty popular name, after all.) That doesn't matter for our Anna, though. She still has to freak out like the Death Star just blew up Alderaan or something…

I think she should just get the fuck over it. None of this would have happened if she'd just bought some CDs last week. (Okay, it probably would have, but she'd have already dipped her toes into the digital space ever so slightly before another comic Brian makes included a character named Anna, who was drawn digitally, albeit in a way which homages analog photography…)

Seriously, though…I think Anna is a little too strict about the whole "analog vs. digital" thing. Like, all art is technological in nature in that you need tools and things to make it—even if it's "natural" paints from berries or some shit. In fact, I think art is technology, and it's not like Anna hates all technology. She just hates computers, but they're useful tools, too! And doing something on a computer doesn't mean the computer's doing the real work. It's just acting as a recording medium, basically. That, or it's doing something automatically, because a person made a creative decision and it would sure be nice to not have to do everything completely by hand, like fonts, colors, and formatting on a website! Honestly, a lot of analog methods rely heavily on exploiting automated chemical, mechanical, or even electronic processes too. There's a lot of overlap and grey area here, and people like Anna (and honestly Brian a lot of the time) just fetishize non-digital technology because it's "old" and slightly different, just like people will fetishize digital technology because it's "new" and slightly different.

I guess it is a little different with "AI Art," but that's not even really AI…or art. It's basically just taking an input and running it through a series of equations to randomly generate an image file that those equations say is statistically likely to satisfy the input. The results, then, are things like these:

One complaint I have right off the bat is that Anna and I aren't supposed to be colored in! That's part of the whole thing. People should imagine whatever colors they want for us. Also, Brian says that it wasn't nearly as fun or satisfying seeing generic, inaccurate versions of us get generated by a program as it is to have us come from his own hands as individual characters. Apparently, there's a lot more joy in trying to work out how to draw my hand with my fingers coming towards the "camera" than there is in typing in a prompt and getting back a lady with three legs. Plus, these pictures just…don't make sense.

Now, before anyone goes fretting about it: There are no plans to use machine learning-based image generators for my comic or anything else Brian makes. The exception is situations like this one, where the topic of interest is that the images were generated by "AI." Brian says that the reason to make art is as much about the process of getting the end result as having the end result, and he'd much rather have the imperfect end results that come from his work (using tools, including computers) than to have the super imperfect end results that come from a computer program blindly spitting out a JPEG in response to a couple lines of text. I don't quite get what he's saying about his work being "imperfect," though, because I'm pretty sure that I'm perfect…Just ask me!

Anyway, I hope anyone who's bugged understands that I ain't approvin' or embracin' this here "AI Art" stuff. It is a fact of life, though, and I don't know…It's all a lot, with many variables. I think anybody who is absolutely certain of their position one way or another is oversimplifying something here…and they're also probably a self-righteous ass-turtle. Let's just be human beings and try not to be so mad at each other for existing all the time…So says the fictional sk8er girl!

P.S. Don't tell Anna that we generated a picture of her with "AI," even if it was "For Science"…She's a self-righteous ass-turtle.