Today Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as corporate sponsor.

[Gast]

@Blender are you out of your fucking mind?

[Gast]

@fsiddi @art_codesmith this is intense for a reason. You took money from a company that helped kill over a hundred children 2 months ago.

Killed. Children.

And you took their money.

And now you wonder why people are telling you to fuck off…

Blender is now associated with war crimes. I hope accepting the donation was worth it.

[Gast]

@Blender RIP Blender, been nice knowing you

[Gast]

@Blender
Oh my God, no.

[Gast]

@Blender
The complete picture? The association is bad enough on its own ️

[Gast]

@Blender
i don't feel like anything is suggesting a controversial nature in this announcement.

[Gast]

@Blender ecocide is a bad look

[Gast]

@Blender Absolute worthlessness. I hope you're happy now that you've nuked your userbase.

[Gast]

@Blender well this fucking sucks

[Gast]

@Blender u suck !

[titania@retro.pizza]

@fsiddi sure, I'll bite.

1). Did you do any market research whatsoever before deciding to tank your reputation?
2). Are you planning to use Claude to draft your resignation letter in light of how badly you screwed up?

[Gast]

@fsiddi @desttinghim right, so you want to make sure that across the board, all the creative people using the software and investing in support are backhanded equally and with clarity, and warned away from ever trusting again.
fantastic!

[Gast]

@amcooper I lol'd

[puniko@mk.absturztau.be]

@Blender@mastodon.social really dissappointing. i know money is needed, but even then, AI corpos should never be allowed to come anywhere close to projects used to create art.

you are basically alienating most artists using your software, your core user base. i'm pretty sure you don't really want that, so you should reconsider this decision

[Gast]

@Blender maybe you shouldn't partner with actual pirates. Read the room. Do you really think that they won't just steal our 3D art now? Because that's the message and very likely the reality. As a company you deserve the bad press over this, no matter how much you justify this.

(Sorry to the maintainer of this account, you probably aren't in a position to change things and it sucks that your whole day will be some variation of this reaction)

[Gast]

@Blender You seriously think this is about "tone"?

[Gast]

@Blender I cannot support this decision in any way. Accepting money from Anthropic is quite loaded.... and part of that load is the TNT you are going to toss on the community fostered around growth for Blender

Many artists and creatives have a general negative stance on AI (especially re: generative AI). Many of these artists have been exploited or had thier work training AI without thier consent. To accept Anthropic's blood money directly takes a crap on the entire creative community.

.... and all of that us aside from the environmental damage, and the lives that this will cost. You taking money from AI companies is an endorsement of Fascism and Environmental Destruction Machines

[Gast]

@Blender This is heartbreaking. I hope a fork of Blender takes off because the project clearly isn't in responsible hands.

[Gast]

@Blender Read the f room and cancel the sponsorship.
Microsoft and Facebook are not enough warmonger sponsors for you?

[Gast]

@rapsneezy2 @Blender you can find some useful email addresses at https://fund.blender.org/contact/ where you can probably send those questions. If you get a reply, share it.