TL;DR The scratch team is introducing Generative AI. This is not okay. At least half of the user base is young artists who have no other place to post their work. I have been using this platform for over half my life, and I am disappointed. This has always been a safe space for me and it seems like it won't be for much longer. Hey guys. If you haven't heard, the scratch team is introducing generative AI onto the platform. I would like to reiterate the words of others on this platform: THIS IS NOT OKAY. A large portion of the user-base - at least half - are young artists who use this platform to share their art, because they are not allowed to use anything else. By adding AI that collects their art, you are destroying the livelihoods of tens of millions of people. As a long term user of Scratch (see @TitosLulu for my original account), I am disappointed in you. I have been using this platform for just over half of my life. Until now, there have been no issues - this was always a safe space for me to come to away from people who bully me at school, a place for me to vent about my favourite character in a book dying, a place I came to for comfort when my grandma died in 2022, just a few days before my birthday, and a place I came to when I had just been diagnosed with autism. This platform has been a place that I could get away from my problems and feel truly happy for almost 7 years. I will not stand for it being defaced with generative AI. I may not be a visible artist, but I am a musician. I will be recording an album later this year at Abbey Road Studios. I am not a musician in the sense that I play an instrument. I am a musician in the sense that it is my entire life. Most of my joy and happiness comes from the fact I will always have that to rely on. But artists on scratch will not have long before everything they have worked for is cruelly ripped away and stolen. The case was always that work we posted was Public Domain, and we were okay with that. But taking our work and running it through AI just so you have more character sets is absolutely horrendous. We are okay with other PEOPLE using our work, and those who aren't can simply say "No tracing" "Dont steal" etc in the description and that will (most of the time) stop people. But it will not stop a greedy corporation who can't be bothered to just pay an artist to make more art - like you at this time from inputting AI. AI that will not discriminate. AI that will take everyone's work just to make making a game slightly less time consuming. Peace out, Austin.
Screw Gen-AI.
