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Considering that ChatGPT and Bard is a language model that relies heavily on what's available out there online -- and Midjourney does the same for images -- I imagine... AI can only go as far as how 'depraved' the most erotic of fanfic can go? Perhaps AI is ridding us of the shame of having to write it ourselves and doing the heavy lifting for us?

But, yeah, some tend to misrepresent fandoms as just being about fantasies of being in the same bed as whoever.

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As far as depravity goes, male pregnancy dates back to Star Trek fandom...! There's been time to evolve.

It's definitely doing the heavy lifting! Writing fic is so hard, and even harder if you don't get feedback which has been declining like mad, interspersed with insults as if commenting on stories is the same as writing Amazon reviews. I'm already seeing "ChatGPT" fics posted on archives. We'll see if there's a resistance at some point.

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I keep thinking, maybe fantasizing, that a clear limit of generative AI, especially in a commercialized context, is that we've spent the last twenty year with people getting ever easier access to creation tools and the ability to make "careers" via digital creations. Yet, when looking at the platforms (YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, etc.) the shelf life of said creations remains ephemeral and when the main mode of revenue generation in culture right now leans towards extracting excessive fandom, there just appears to me a mismatch. (Also when most of these platforms are money losers on top of that...who is going to pay for the endless unprofitable AI works.) That factored onto a broader economic environment where even the places that host this content feel increased pressure to turn a profit, how much is there to be made with a billion people all watching their own 1 of 1 content that as you point out cannot sustain the levels of fandom that previous existed.

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