Hey all. Been thinking about some things. Been contemplating a return. I know my wording was very strong in my semi-retirement post so I want to explain why.

Chatbot Overuse: It's getting better. It's not fixed. But it's getting better. It is easier for me to pull away and say "Okay, I'm done with this story, I'll do something else." I'll usually play for a few weeks, then log out for a few weeks. I've been getting shit sorted out personally that I never could before. I am making actual, personal progress for the first time in a year.

Thoughts on Generative AI: I'm not sure I'm really fully anti-gen-AI anymore. I'm definitely still against it in a commercial sense, and I still think it looks worse 90% of the time than actual drawn art. But my current conclusion is different than what it was in my semi-retirement post:

Generative AI for personal, non-commercial use is fine. It is not preferable, but it is fine.

I still struggle with motivation when it comes to actually learning to draw, but ultimately, I don't know how much better stealing one single image for a bot really is compared to the slurry of stolen images used in AI models. As for environmental issues, I do still have qualms but I've accepted that I still enjoy doing it, like I do with similar mediums that also have high environmental impacts (even if I don't think comparing it to something like Netflix is a fair comparison considering they fill two different niches). So for now what I'm instead gonna consider is generating at a reduced rate. So fewer images per bot most likely, and I'll still do bots with regular yoinked pics like I was contemplating. If I see an image that's almost perfect sans a minor detail, I'll incorporate that minor detail into the bot. Besides, this is still a site that relies on LLMs, the only way for me to stop with AI entirely would be to delete my account and I don't think I'm at the point mentally where I can delete and walk away given that I've already deleted two different accounts before this one.

On My Previous Bots: I got a question in the comments on whether I was still proud of what I made despite the AI usage. Thinking back, I think, to an extent, I am. I like to think that my character bots are basically high quality OCs, even with the images that they have. The intros are basically set-ups for stories that they could be experiencing, and I think in my free-time I'd like to expand on these OCs for my own personal projects.

I'm basically coming to terms with the fact that, at the end of the day, I still enjoy playing with and writing bots. Guilty as II may feel some days, this is something I enjoy doing. So I'm going to keep monitoring my usage until it's at a level that I consider fully healthy. You'll know if I decide to for sure come back if I post a bot anytime soon. Maybe see you later.