The recent announcement about Anthropic joining the Blender Development Fund as a Corporate Patron member has raised concerns from the community around how we engage with AI topics.

[amosmulder@mastodon.social]

@Blender I'm not sure what to think about still accepting the money, it's a compromise where I would have loved to see a very clear 'no thanks' to such a harmful company.

But I'm happy you considered our feedback and did something with it at least.

Personally I hope you can find another way to deal with corporate funding in the future. I'd rather wait a year longer for a new version of Blender than seeing some of these mega(maga)corps like google and meta on the fund.

[higgins@hachyderm.io]

@violetmadder @Blender Indeed, must be really easy being chairman for that foundation, just accept whatever bloody money and if there is an outrage you backpedal as little as possible while keeping the cash. No need to think ahead or have, you know, ethics.

[bradley@techhub.social]

@Blender oh nice another one of these:

"We should have opened up more conversation and perspectives from contributors before making this decision, and for that we are sorry."

Who could have predicted this?

[dianaprobst@mastodon.art]

@Blender 'engage with AI topics' is some good corporate speak.

GenAI has stolen the work of artists I know, and the scrapers it requires are a drain on the entire web. It's good you have understood the anger exists, but please prove you understand why it is there as well. People are about to be able to use Blender, trivially, to produce the sorts of thing I and many friends make *because we made it and our work has been examined without our consent*. That is a huge thing.

[allow_me_to_illustrate@mastodon.social]

@Blender Still not happy with the acceptance of the one-time donation. But I can at least recognise the effort to listen to your community in this matter, and appreciate it.

[dianaprobst@mastodon.art]

@Blender It's also catastrophically expensive in terms of computing power. Those data centres are not small, and they are often built in the sorts of vulnerable places that already have little protection. They are then adding energy cost to simple tasks. Please do not make that easier. I love your work. I want to be able to keep using it.

[mxchara@seattle.pink]

@Blender You could just NOT, you know? Is Anthropic's money—dripping with fascist slime—really THAT tempting to you?

[nawer_rapter@mastodon.social]

@Blender if this text doesn't include "we're going to kill everyone in anthropic" it's probably not going to work sadly (yes we do want anthropic to die)
Anyways good on you for stealing money from some douchebags, just don't let them speak even a single word, in fact, erase them from the list of people who paid you. They aren't people anymore anyways.

[mxchara@seattle.pink]

@amosmulder Is @Blender's software even all that good? One can only hope that there are, in fact, alternatives in the works—from what I've seen so far anyway the Blender "user experience" is a deeply unpleasant one, so the knowledge that Blender's also been sopping up lots of technofascist cash suggests to me the crying need to abandon Blender altogether. Now that's a long-term sort of answer; it takes time to make software as complex as Blender. But holy heck...it would be nice if there were something else out there. Almost anything else!

[sb@metroholografix.ca]

@Blender
Fucking sellouts

[mxchara@seattle.pink]

@amosmulder Oh, and let me point out something obvious: shitty @Blender UX is, from the perspective of the "generative AI" slop juggernaut, a golden opportunity. "Generative AI" starts to look like an awfully tempting shortcut solution to shitty software which people don't want to abandon for business reasons. #Blender and indeed almost all complex corporate #software is a nightmare for the unsophisticated user—in steps the slop machine, offering the user the tempting choice of not caring that the software is overcomplicated bloatware because now an "agent" is handling it.

[stonykark@mstdn.ca]

@Blender this is nothing, it is corporate drivel with no meaning

[synlogic4242@social.vivaldi.net]

@Blender you're on Anthropic's payroll now. de facto

[mahadevank@mastodon.social]

@Blender i love the comments in the thread and i agree.

Its similar to accepting blood diamonds as a donation.

The source of the money matters.

[kosure@mas.to]

@Blender TLDR: you're idiots for being upset and nothing fundamentally changes.

[aimeemaroux@mastodon.social]

@Blender "Blender is a tool for artists and creators, it’s made by humans for humans."
What place does generative AI have here, then?
I don't usually think that purity should stand in the way of the good but as you say yourself, you are a tool for artists and genAI is hurting artists. Anthropic is hurting your user base. I understand that FOSS projects need funding but this is a line in the sand moment.

[lynndotpy@mastodon.social]

@Blender I guess I'll be a dissenting voice here, but for as evil Anthropic is, funding from Meta is a thousand times worse. That bothered me more and will continue to bother me more.

[kosure@mas.to]

@Blender It looks like (other than a logo on the website) Patrons get their calls answered by the Board and a dev team to help them. I wonder if $281k+ grants one some of those considerations regardless of what it's called.

[brobot90001@mastodon.online]

@Blender

company: we're going to do something really extremely bad for our customers and possibly even people who aren't our customers. we think this is good

furious internet mob: we hate this

company: we'd like to clarify our intentions. just to be clear: we're doing the same thing but we'd like you to hate it a little less now

Return the blood money and make a permanent stand against Ai companies and not just a wishy washy “for now” and leaving that door unlocked #blender

[bachus@mastodon.social]

@Blender You can address the issue by giving the blood money back and by pledging to never add AI bullshit into Blender, ever.