AI Art Sucks.
Hello Adventures!
Heather and I are working hard to get ready for Megaplex! We were originally going to enter under a re-branded PSPSPS, but decided that it would be better if we branded differently. One of our future dreams is to operate our own little nerdy cafe. Something like a mix between an LGS and a local coffee shop. So we ended up future-proofing by naming ourselves Loot and Lore Cafe. It also didn’t help that “Loot And Lore” was taken on a ton of social media platforms, but LootAndLoreCafe was wide open. So we jumped on that.
Now, for Megaplex, we branded ourselves as simply Loot and Lore, because we didn’t want “Cafe” to bring about any confusion or false expectations of what we’re offering. We are certainly not intending on serving food and drink at a furry convention. (Yet, question mark?) Anyway…
Fast forward a little bit to a situation which prompted the title of this blog post. Without naming names or pointing fingers at any one person or group of people, it had come to light that there was a serious concern that “Loot and Lore” is an organization that creates AI generated items and sells them. Obviously, the concern was that “AI Art being sold at convention being passed as actual art,” and so on.
I want to stress two things here:
I deeply appreciate that there are vigilant folks out there who are consciously trying to separate AI generative anythings away from a community that thrives on the art that they create. Truly. Which brings us to….
AI “art” is not art. It’s not the future of artistic production. It’s not the next generation of artists. AI “art” is a big flaming “F-U” to the artists and creators passionate about their craft. Loot and Lore Cafe will never utilize AI in anything that we do.
When we were first questioned about our production, we were obviously confused. We’d yet to even go public with the project. We were planning on Megaplex being the “debut event” of Loot and Lore. But of course, while we were emailing with Megaplex, Heather found a few other websites called Loot and Lore, or some other variances of that title…. and they absolutely were selling AI generated artwork.
So dang, no wonder the accusation had surfaced. We knew we had to act quickly and begin raising an online presence, so that we could separate ourselves from the AI Slop sites with similar names. Our fault for not being more thorough in the name research, but we’ve come to love the name too much. So press on we shall.
We could have a long, passionate conversation about the application of AI in other fields of life. I’m personally not a fan in the majority of AI’s use cases. But one thing you can always count on when it comes to Heather, myself, and anyone else we choose to associate with our business, is that AI art has no home here. AI art is not welcome here.
Again, I appreciate that the concern was raised, and I appreciate that we had the chance to defend ourselves and clear our name. I don’t want to cause any problems for the folks who brought the concern to light or had to conduct the investigation, but if you’re reading this, thank you for taking it seriously.
We look forward to seeing everyone in Florida for Megaplex!
—Echo
