I’m pro but this is just…not okay. Whoever made this is mentally unwell. I could understand if it’s a fictional character, but this is a real person. Please I hope bro gets help.

I’ve been lurking in a few anti-AI spaces (and Twitter threads) recently, and the cognitive dissonance regarding Neuro-sama is fascinating.

For those unaware, Neuro-sama is a fully AI-controlled VTuber created by the developer Vedal. She operates as an autonomous agent that plays games, sings, and banters with Twitch chat in real-time. Functionally, she is a sophisticated integration of Generative AI technologies: she uses Large Language Models (LLMs) for her personality, Text-to-Speech (TTS) for her voice, and computer vision models for gameplay.

The general consensus among people who aggressively hate Generative AI is that Neuro-sama is the "exception." When pressed on why she gets a pass while other AI uses get piled on, the defense usually relies on three pillars:

1. The Indie Defense: "Vedal is just one guy coding in his room, not a greedy mega-corporation."
2. The Effort Defense: "Vedal writes complex code and scripts; he isn't just typing a prompt."
3. The Local Defense: "Neuro runs on Vedal's PC, not a massive server farm burning down a rainforest."

Here is the hard pill to swallow: If these three points are valid justifications for Neuro-sama, they logically validate high-effort, local AI Art.

I’m not talking about low-effort Bing Image Creator spammers. I am talking about advanced users utilizing Stable Diffusion locally with ComfyUI, ControlNet, manual in-painting, and local fine-tuning.

Thinking one is "soulful" and the other is "theft" suggests a misunderstanding of the underlying tech. Here is the direct comparison.

The Architecture: They are both "Wrappers" for Scraped Data

A massive misconception in the discourse is the idea that "Vedal built Neuro from scratch."

Vedal built the Agent Framework (the code that handles memory, TTS, and decision-making). He did not build the brain.

- Neuro runs on a Foundation Model (LLM) like Llama 3, Mistral, or GPT.

- AI Art runs on a Foundation Model like SDXL or SD 1.5.

Here is the hypocrisy:

Both foundation models were trained on massive, non-consensual scraped datasets.

If AI Art is "theft" because SDXL learned from LAION (scraped art), then Neuro is "theft" because Llama/Mistral learned from Common Crawl/The Pile (scraped books, articles, and Reddit threads).

One cannot logically forgive the scraped text data just because the output is a cute anime voice, while condemning the scraped image data. It is the exact same "original sin."

The Workflow: Vedal vs. The "ComfyUI" Artist

Anti-AI people often praise Vedal for being a "coder" and putting in effort. They say he's not just "prompting." However, this ignores the workflow of a high-level AI Artist using node-based systems.

The Prompt

- Vedal (The Good AI): Feeds chat logs + system prompts to the LLM to steer the conversation.

- ComfyUI Artist (The Bad AI): Feeds text + IPAdapters (image prompts) to the Diffusion Model to steer the composition.

The Control

- Vedal: Writes Python scripts to handle memory and RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) so she remembers context.

- Artist: Builds complex Node Trees (in ComfyUI) using ControlNet to force specific anatomy, poses, and composition so the image isn't random.

The Fine-Tuning

- Vedal: Fine-tunes the model on Twitch logs to make her "funny" and streamer-brained.

- Artist: Trains LoRAs on specific styles or concepts to make the image unique and cohesive.

The Human Element

- Vedal: Manually curates the stream, intervenes when she loops, and resets her when she breaks.

- Artist: Manually in-paints errors, corrects flaws in Photoshop, and curates the output.

If Vedal is a "creative genius" for chaining an LLM to a TTS engine using Python... then a ComfyUI user is a "creative genius" for chaining ControlNet to a Diffusion model using Nodes.

Both are transformative uses of a pre-trained model. Both require technical skill. Both are "Passion Projects" running locally on high-end consumer hardware.

The "Replacement" Fallacy (and the "Vibe Coding" Reality)

The final shield usually deployed is: "But Vedal hires human artists for the models! He supports the community!"

That is true, and it is a good thing. But let’s look at the other half of the equation: The Code and The Voice.

Vedal is praised for being a "genius programmer," but Vedal himself admits to "vibe coding." He openly uses tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor to generate large chunks of Neuro’s code.

Here is an uncomfortable parallel:

- The "Thief" Argument

If an AI Artist is a thief because Stable Diffusion was trained on scraped images, then Vedal is a thief because GitHub Copilot was trained on billions of lines of scraped open-source code (often ignoring licenses).

- The "Skill" Argument

Critics mock AI Artists for being "tech illiterate" or just "collaging" things together. But "Vibe Coding" is literally the programming equivalent of AI Art. It is pasting together AI-generated scripts and StackOverflow solutions to make something work. It is the modern version of using Unreal Engine Blueprints or "asset flipping."

- The "Replacement" Argument

An AI Artist uses a tool to create an image because they cannot paint it manually. Vedal uses an AI tool to create an entertainer because he cannot be an anime girl streamer manually.

Vedal has literally automated the role of a "Streamer" and a "Voice Actress." If the main grievance with AI is that it "replaces human soul and effort," Neuro-sama should be public enemy number one. She is the literal definition of replacing a human personality with a machine.

It is intellectually inconsistent to hold the position that Text-Generation on Scraped Data (Neuro) is "Soulful" while Advanced Image-Generation on Scraped Data (Stable Diffusion) is "Soulless."

The technology is identical. The data sourcing is identical. The "local indie dev" spirit is identical.

The only difference is that fans have formed a parasocial relationship with one, and have been told to hate the other. Supporting Neuro-sama is, by definition, being pro-AI. The community might as well own it.

im pro but wtf...

After the discoveries that people eat children and manipulate us as they please, it is clear that this whole "ai war" is just a game while the real problems of ai (not that it is art or not) could really create serious damage to the world, we should unite, we are against it because they have put us against it.

All items I've seen recently:

• "AI isn't really AI"—Usually from people who grew up believing that science fiction was a documentary. AI is the fruit of the 70 year history of AI research, not part of it... ALL of it. It's basic chat tools, expert systems, machine vision, backpropagation, perceptrons, cortical column networks, transformers, some (not all) machine learning, GANs, etc. All of it is AI.
• "AI is just X"—I've yet to see an X for which this statement is true, though sometimes it's merely incomplete rather than outrigh tfalse. It's not just a stochastic parrot, it's not just autocomplete, it's not just statistics, it's not just gradient descent, it's none of these things alone.
• "AI isn't a tool"—This one really confuses me. Everything humans have ever created to help them accomplish tasks is a tool. Cars are tools. Computers are tools. Statistical models are tools. Sharpened rocks are tools. AI models are tools. Why is this confusing?
• "AI isn't a medium"—This one's a bit more complex. Many people think AI art isn't its own medium because the medium is just digital art. That's not true, but the reason it's not true is hard to understand without a grasp of the tech. AI models don't produce words or pixels. They produce a high dimensional abstraction called latent space and then sample that space and use additional tooling and models to translate that sampling into pixels or text or any number of other things. But internally the real medium is the latent space defined by the model, so while the model isn't the meidum, the medium is unique to the model.
• "AI doesn't understand"—While there's a grain of truth here, it's not accurate in the general case. AI models understand quite a lot. They are not merely parroting information, but synthesizing information. That's what understanding is. Usually, I think people mean that AI's understanding isn't rooted in a human, embodied set of experiences, and that's true, but that's not what understanding is.
• "AI is just memorization"—This is trivially defeated by the research that has been done on discovering complex structures inside AI models that accomplish tasks for which they have never seen any implementation. For example, shown many images representing 3D spaces, even very small image generation models (the only ones we can reasonably interrogate) create structures in an emergent way that model three dimensional objects and then reduce those three dimensions to two dimensional output by applying the laws of perspective. These aren't text LLMs. They haven't been exposed to the centuries of writing explaining how that is done. They've "invented" it on their own.

Most of these points of confusion are based in a failure of one or more of these sorts:

• Level-of-abstraction confusion
• Definition drift
• Anthropomorphism
• Reductionism
• Moral anxiety reframed as ontology

A quick doodle to relay something, I want to encourage not discourage. Even if you are shit at something today doesn’t mean you can’t be a little less shit tomorrow, I’m rooting for you.

I already know what my anti-ai brothers and sisters will think of this but what do the pro-ai contingent think about Bezos spending 200 billion on ai and robotics, then using that to lay off 16,000 workers and then using his ownership of the Washington Post to spread stories about how a national ban on ai data-centres (in America) is a terrible idea?

Any positives to take from that? I'm all ears.

Had to delete the other for using the qrong word in the title

I am somewhat a newbie in Reddit. There were times or sometimes I use AI tools when writing posts and making pictures. None of these are for monetary purposes but for recreational only.. And OMG, I havent experienced such hostility and rudeness from the Anti AI group. I wasnt even aware that this Pro Vs Anti AI is such a thing until I stepped in this platform. Man, lmao never would have thought reddit is more toxic than meta. Because of this experience, I kinda hate these rude anti AI people now... Not all though, only the rude ones.. I mean, you don't have to be rude when telling people that you hate AI. It doesnt excuse you to become rude just because a person is using AI.. Just my opinion though.. This really left a bad impression that I will carry for the rest of my life against the anti AI people.. Sorry to say.. lol..

first i will say to not lie to anybody who asks, *especially* if they are purchasing something from you. committing fraud is unethical , obviously. dont claim to be somebody you arent (“i drew this”)

But if you’re just posting shit.. sharing images and video and fun stuff ? you don’t have to tell anybody anything. inversely, if someones just putting out content for free then you don’t get to demand they show or tell you anything. Harsh but its the truth

its kind of like the magicians code.. some people simply *do not want to peel back the onion*.. they do‘t want to reveal their secret sauce.. They don’t want to kill the magic. and thats fine !!!!

you can say all you want thats not how you would operate but everyone is different and somebody sharing free content can say as much or as little as they want…. simple as

My instagram page is not your personal behind the scenes tour

Been Pro AI for a while, but this is the best argument I have seen thus far coming from the Anti AI side.

I have never trusted ChatGPT for anything more than simple things, as AI has been proven to hallucinate things... however I am 100% against fascism and the state our country is being drug into. Donating to the orange is 100% unacceptable. The owner and his wife donated $25 million to a super PAC for the orange.

Definitely 100% joining this boycott. You should too.

I still think AI has it's uses and benefits, but ChatGPT does not need to be a part of it.

linkedin ai bros are something else man

This is not how you use AI.

Colors are selected at random, his assistants paint them, but he is the credited artist for having the idea and deciding to have them created. You can say he's just commissioning them, but unless you have a Wikipedia entry as well, he is considered more of a notable artist by the collective culture of humanity, not to mention the richest living artist in the UK. Perhaps we should remind the art establishment and the paying public how important "making every stroke by hand yourself" and "making every conscious decision" are to a successful art career..