(pssttt look at these: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/projects/1049673376 https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/projects/1049510613)

so, as i’ve heard, the scratch team has stated on X that they will be adding the ability to make AI generated sprites, to help scratchers “explore how to iterate, challenge, and engage AI tools in playful and creative ways”. now, i am not attacking the scratch team, but rather giving constructive criticism/feedback.

this is a bad idea. do you know what AI does to people? they steal art from actual artists and conjure a completely different and messy “drawing”. and younger scratchers (who have no idea what’s going on) will think that ai art is alright. you literally give them a prompt, and there it is. an effortless “piece of art”.

AI art is not art, and it will never be. it is just something that promotes stealing art from actual artists and is actually a waste of money! and using AI generators is not creative, and doesn’t help people be creative either. sure, it looks nice to the eye (for some amateurs /hj), but once you look closely, there are a lot of flaws and evidence that the art has been stolen (like watermarks, similarities to actual art pieces, etc.). like, if you want to be as good as your so called AI “art”, then practice! practice until you feel satisfied. and plus, most of us are never satisfied so we practice more!

now, what else can they do? think about it. what can they ACTUALLY do that is productive, fine, and actually helps? (in my opinion).

they can update the editor a bit! *mind blown* /sarc (i’m so cringe)

when i was younger (yes, i had a scratch acc before, but i don’t want to talk about that and i deleted it), i didn’t much have any access to any drawing apps/sites (before i knew kleki existed), because i didn’t have any permission (or maybe dumb 10-yr-old me didn’t know how to ☠️). so i used scratch bitmap. it was fun, and i got used to it, but i was introduced to more professional art apps, like Autodesk Sketchbook and Procreate. they used layers, multiple brushes, and more!

but when i came back (a year ago, i was definitely 12), i was like “hey scratch bitmap is kind of difficult to deal with! there are no layers and all!!” so yeah i just sticked to importing images i drew on procreate.

now call me a snob, but i think that scratch bitmap is simple, but needs a littleee bit more work. we can add more options to the costume editor, and make bitmap as easy as other art apps. now, this is just a suggestion, not a demand or an order. the scratch team can do it if they like, and if they decline, that’s completely fine, we can import art, that’s fine.

in conclusion, scratch should NOT add an ai generated sprite generator, because ai art will not boost other peoples’ creativity, and might actually decrease it, and plus, ai art steals art from actual humans. you can do something else though.

thank you.

-maelyn/@rickrollkitt

(i sound like a lecturer at a ted talk but who is bad at typing ☠️☠️ /hj)

isn’t th bitmap suggestion thingy and the watevrr at the top seprate suggests
(Don expect my spelling to be all shiny, it’s 3:32 AM my time(

support pls scrap the idea for ai generated sprites PLSSSS!

Zack_39450 wrote:

isn’t th bitmap suggestion thingy and the watevrr at the top seprate suggests
(Don expect my spelling to be all shiny, it’s 3:32 AM my time(

oh yeah pfft hahah

the scratch team has not announced they will be adding AI. the post on social media is about a workshop at a conference where they were tinkering with the idea of AI in scratch in various forms - of course they want to see how AI might be useful in scratch but this is mostly about identifying advantages and shortcomings of different approaches to adding AI to scratch.

you can read some information about these AI features in the scratch lab blog: https://medium.com/scratchteam-blog/inside-scratch-lab-ai-image-generation-179f11bd921a

The newer models of AI generators tend to not steal art, instead they take inspiration from it. The same cannot be said for older models that just rip straight from artists or stock photos. However, if you ask, for example, dall e 3 to generate an image, most of the time you wouldn't be able to pick out and find the images that the AI used directly.

rickrollkitt wrote:

this is a bad idea. do you know what AI does to people? they steal art from actual artists and conjure a completely different and messy “drawing”. and younger scratchers (who have no idea what’s going on) will think that ai art is alright. you literally give them a prompt, and there it is. an effortless “piece of art”.

Is there a problem with being able to fabricate pictures that one otherwise wouldn't be able to draw? Most scratchers are kids and many don't have the artistic ability to draw quality art.

rickrollkitt wrote:

AI art is not art, and it will never be.

Nobody claimed it was. You are right, by definition, it is not art. This does not show why scratch team should not add it. If a chicken nugget factory builds a machine to make chicken nuggets, the produced chicken nuggets do not count as art.

rickrollkitt wrote:

like, if you want to be as good as your so called AI “art”, then practice! practice until you feel satisfied. and plus, most of us are never satisfied so we practice more!

Thats impossible. One will never be able to practice enough to be better than AI art generators with the way they're rapidly advancing.

rickrollkitt wrote:

they can update the editor a bit! *mind blown* /sarc (i’m so cringe)

It's fine as it is. Scratch team has more important stuff to deal with.

The Scratch Team is not planning on adding AI features anytime soon. They are experimenting with it, but that doesn't mean they are planning on adding it. After all, it's hard to determine whether or not something should be added without experimenting with it. See this blog post for more information: https://scratch.org/blog/inside-scratch-lab-ai-image-generation/

Specifically, note the part which states:

Because of the many challenges with AI image generation, we won’t be including it in Scratch any time soon, even on our Scratch Lab site.

Summarizing the article, there are many problems with AI that the Scratch Team recognizes: not just issues with credit, but also the potential for inappropriate content, the cost, racial/cultural biases, and simply the limitations in getting a “good” image with AI. This was also written several months ago — experimentation with AI is nothing new, but I still think we are very far from seeing it in Scratch, if at all.

So considering that the Scratch Team isn't planning on adding AI to Scratch at the moment, I'm not sure that there needs to be a suggestion against it.

This is all aside from the fact that, if everything works out well, AI in Scratch could actually be very cool and enhance creativity. I'm not going to go into details here, though; the above blog post lists many benefits.