INTERVIEW with NO NOTHING by PENELOPE DARIO
IMAGES by NO NOTHING
CREATIVES ARE ALL IN A TIZZY ABOUT AI TAKING OVER. SHOULD SEX WORKERS BE EQUALLY CONCERNED?
No Nothing is a UK-based photographer, 3D artist, creative director, and kinkster with an ear to the ground in the tech world, where change is happening at an alarming rate. We can't say for sure how this process will unfold, but here is someone who sees the writing on the wall and can give us a pretty clear picture of where we are now and what that says about the future of creativity and consumerism.
PENELOPE DARIO
We talked a year ago when the AI stuff was already taking off, it was already in the forefront of the culture, but it wasn't viral the way it is now. I'm really curious to hear about your opinions on the current state of affairs with AI getting in the hands of the people and what the future holds for artists. I know a lot of people are really scared about what it could mean, and I wanted to get your feedback in broad strokes and then get into details.
NO NOTHING
I started being intrigued like everybody else was a couple of years ago. It was quite unattainable to get it running locally on your computer, and it was not very advanced. With the time you put into it you wouldn't really get anything out that was usable. I was focusing on my other work: my photography and 3D work. Then I started noticing things popping up, like stable diffusion, and the community around that. That pulled me back in again. I watched it from afar and by the time it reached this critical mass, it had already been co-opted by the huge corporations. They were using the source code to make these one-click- solves-all solutions, which deleted the entire process. It democratized it, in a sense, but they added a price tag to it. This was all open source stuff, it was all free at first.
Now I’ve been training my own models on my own work, and using it as a bridge with my fascination with future tech. I'm obsessed with technology, I love it every time there’s something new. I'm like a magpie. At this stage right now, I love it in the sense that the community is involved in building their own models, algorithms, and contributions to the open source scene. That part still feels underground, it still feels like there's a real sense of community. You have all these forums and people ask questions, or you post a problem and you'll get an answer or you'll get flamed. But it's one of those geeky community vibes that I've been into for a while.