404 Media: Andreessen Horowitz Invests in Civitai, Which Profits From Nonconsensual AI Porn

Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm that was an early investor in Facebook, Lyft, and other tech giants, has invested in Civitai, a giant platform for sharing AI models that enables and profits from the creation of AI generated nonconsensual sexual images of real people. That includes launching a feature where people can list “bounties” for others to create AI models of specific targets.

Woof, that sounds like a pretty bad thing to be the quiet thing that actually drives much of the company’s usage. Who are these a16z clowns investing in this again?

Marc Andreessen: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”.

Ah, that’s right, fuck ethics, we don’t have time for those when there’s money to be made.

Side note: I hadn’t read Andreessen’s post in full until today and good lord is it a cringe-fest.