Speaking as purely a hobbyist who iNaturalist has become an integral part of my life, getting me far more involved with the natural world than I was prior to it’s use. I desperately hope the clarification will shed some light or this backlash will at least make y’all reconsider getting involved in GenAI.
As a career fulltime artist, GenAI has been immensely destructive to my industry, to many of my friend’s jobs and harmed me as well - I’m aware that this isn’t about generated images but my feelings cross over to it’s use in writing and text just as well. I am immediately on guard when anything I use decides to implement GenAI/LLMs and I have no qualms with ending my usage of a product or platform when things like these are implemented (Twitter was a no brainer even though I had invested years of my time in that platform), especially without discussion and feedback from it’s very users.
Many here are experts who have stated the very real concerns we have better than I could ever but just as someone who dearly loves this platform and community and what I’ve learned from it, I want to learn from other humans.