After quite a lot of backlash following the Blender announcement that Anthropic would become a Corporate Sponsor, the Blender Foundation released a statement.

After quite a lot of backlash following the Blender announcement that Anthropic would become a Corporate Sponsor, the Blender Foundation released a statement.

  • ryper@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    From Blender’s post:

    After an in-depth discussion with the team and several community contributors, we have decided to receive the funds as a singular donation instead of a Development Fund membership, similar to how other open source organizations have handled such contributions. Anthropic has been informed and supports this decision.

    To use your metaphor, it sounds like they took the money as one-time gift instead of ongoing rent payments.

    As far as generative AI:

    Most importantly, we need to urgently tackle the topic and clearly define how Blender is positioned in regards to generative AI technologies when it comes to the product, software development, documentation, and other activities. Discussions will happen in the public blender.org channels, based on drafts by the Blender team.

    Blender is a tool for artists and creators, it’s made by humans for humans. No generative AI functionality is currently available or planned to be integrated in Blender.

    • eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      I acknowledge that we are reading their press release with different amounts of charity, and that if you view them as communicating in good faith, your interpretation is reasonable.

      I will note that on Mastodon they said they had changed their post to improve the optics to the community. This is also a reframe for optics.

      They didn’t say they weren’t going to harvest your actions to train generative AI, they only said they’re not putting the generative tools in the app for the users.

      Like I said, they’re taking the money, they’re still buddies with Anthropic, they say this was personally negotiated.

      Look at how Harvard interacted with Jeffrey Epstein, same playbook here. Just cause the president of the university was flying on Epstein’s plane and honeymooning on his island doesn’t mean he had influence over Harvard! He wasn’t on the board of trustees!