Absolutely possible to have volunteer art or even one public domain image [e.g. art museums tend to keep online, high quality public domain image archives (The Met, Smithsonian, etc)] for the site's login, if nothing else. These are still solutions and I feel assuming that these options are still not worth discussing to nearly the same length as the others is very disappointing.
Otherwise, thank you for your intensive work, Zach.

This may very well be the last message I post on Juliette as I am waiting to be deactivated, but I felt the need to share my view here in favour of those against the use of AI, as I am 100% against Gen AI in any capacity. We do not need Generative AI. We have never needed it. It steals from humans and destroys the environment. It is not a technology that we ‘need to get used to’, as some have said in this thread. There is a difference between the invention of a phone and the invention of Gen AI, for instance. Anything you can do with AI can already be done elsewhere, all it is doing is stealing this information and putting it on a silver platter for those who don’t care about the consequences to easily digest.

In the case of AI generated backgrounds, plenty of users have already provided alternatives that many seem happy with, yet they are being shut down. I personally do not understand why we are disregarding the idea of volunteering because ‘what if people don’t commit’ when this site is really built on people committing to characters for years, as it runs in real-time. Why do we not trust users who have dedicated seven or more years of their life to this site to dedicate even more time to making the site beautiful, with human art? Especially when they have said they want to.

I would also like to mention the time when Zach did not want to add advertisements to site because it went against the ‘soul of the site’. Does AI generating art not also go against the soul of a site that is built on human creativity? We can’t use AI for our writing because it is a writing site, but writing is art, and so much of this site is comprised of human made code, banners, and aesthetics that adds flavour to the writing. I personally believe you can’t pick and choose when and what you use Gen AI for. If it’s okay for AI images, that is a slippery slope to slowly allowing it to be okay for other things.

My point being, the core of this site is the human community that contributes the writing and the art to it. This is the same community that, from what I’ve seen, are majority against the use of AI backgrounds. I think you are doing a disservice to your player base if you don’t want to at least try the other alternatives (i.e. volunteer art, textured backgrounds, plain backgrounds, royalty free images) before settling for a toggle option that very few seem to want.

I do hope this all makes sense since it’s late for me and I wanted to get this up before heading to bed, but if anyone requires further clarification I am willing to do so (if I’m not deactivated first).

I think that this is a very well crafted argument that sums up all the points that have been made for this side of the argument. I completely agree, and think that, with everything that many people have been agreeing on, which seems to be the fact that we should be given a chance to create human art for this very human site, should not be looked over or dismissed. And I don’t think that it is harsh or disrespectful to say so, as it is a genuinely wonderful thing that so many people are willing to lend their time and art for this site, and it is not impossible.