A Shift in Focus
Reflections on 43, the "AI Bubble," and the Road Ahead
Hello everyone,
I wanted to take a moment to write something of a personal update. As some of you know, I turned 43 recently (January 12th). Birthdays are often natural points for reflection, and looking back on the last few years involves unpacking a lot of complexity. Of course, recently also as of the last two days we finished our third year here at Civitai. It quite feels like another academic achievement, like I've just graduated from another bachelor's degree. (Ally would you mind handing me my graduate's cap? kidding by the way!)
I’m writing this to let you know that I am making some changes to how I operate here on Civitai and in the broader generative AI space. We're likely removing ourselves for safety of our mental health as well from AI spaces.
The Recent Change of Heart
Previously we'd stated we weren't going to, but the cost of our burnout is a lot larger than we thought. In order to prevent ourselves from lashing out, or getting mad at those who've provided a path to the future: we're likely going to remove our profile within the coming weeks or days at the worst case scenario.
I apologize profusely for this, but it came to our attention that our fight for accessible spaces felt more like a bad virtue signal in the wrong direction when it came to AI. While we hold true that you can be creative with AI, and some disabilities can garner new educational resources from AI... We're exhausted.
The Velocity of Innovation
For over a year now, I have been dealing with significant burnout, largely driven by the sheer speed of this industry. We are looking at a landscape where we have Z-Image Turbo, Flux.2, Chroma, and Pony V7 dropping rapidly—each one feeling like a massive paradigm shift.
It is incredible technology, but it creates a difficult pacing issue. While most of us are still refining our workflows for SDXL-based finetunes, the goalposts shift overnight. Trying to keep up feels less like a hobby and more like studying for a new academic degree every single week.
The Bubble, The Politics, and The Fatigue
I want to be real about where I stand in this "AI Bubble." I lean left in my politics—not because I’m trying to be a thorn in anyone's side, but because I have spent my life in a lower income bracket. I see the reality of who gets to participate in this future and who gets left behind.
We are watching the price of NVMEs skyrocket and a RAM crisis that makes upgrading a nightmare. We aren't hearing about price drops for the basics, let alone future tech like Steam Machines or the PS6. We are losing the right to repair our own tools. If you don't earn enough money and aren't connected to the right people, you are simply priced out of the conversation.
This connects to a deeper exhaustion regarding privacy and ethics.
Security: We see projects like "Moltbot" suffer catastrophic security failures where owners lose control to crypto scammers because basic security was not there.
The Agentic Future: We are barreling toward this future where "AI Agents" having their own social media accounts, while companies hold contracts with governments and define "ethical" based on who has the money to sweep problems under the rug.
Privacy: I struggle with the feeling of being the product. Why does my browser need my biometric data? Why does my phone need to track how I snore at 4 AM?
I’m the first to give consent if I know what I’m getting into, but it feels like we are losing that choice. Yet, of course it's not that I am pointing fingers towards any platform in specific, it's the nature of advertising: you are the product. Civitai is not at fault for the fact to stay afloat they need metrics not just of user input and output - but what sort of content is used. Traffic metrics, content metrics - it's not just data to sell, it's also data used to continue bettering platforms.
The Personal Reality
To be vulnerable for a moment: Life outside the screen is heavy. My stepfather had a stroke this year, and my mother is battling rheumatoid arthritis and COPD. I need to generate income, but I am not "normal" enough to earn it the way society says I should.
I am a DID system (with 300+ alters), I have ADHD and autism, and I am non-binary. Some might label me "radical leftist scum" because of my identity or my polycule, but honestly? I’m mostly just exhausted. Traditional jobs are a struggle due to my inconsistency, and content creation triggers my anxiety.
AI felt like the answer. It felt like the bridge. But recently, the image generation side of it has felt less like a bridge and more like a treadmill.
The Economic Reality
To be transparent about my setup: I am still daily driving a 2019 iMac 27" Retina. While I’ve moved to using Windows for some workflows, I am currently bottlenecked by the need for more RAM to get serious work done. When I look at the money I’ve spent over the last three years—money that could have gone toward a new GPU for a partner, or a functional, modern computer for myself—it becomes clear that I cannot continue to invest in a "future" here without having a financial buffer to stand on today.
The Shift:
From Generation to Development
Going forward, I am going to be stepping back from the constant cycle of generative media creation.
There are very little reasons for me to continue on for many of the outstanding promises, however being that we are terribly still interested in finishing many AI related niche projects for development, and will not step away from them...
We may finish a couple of outstanding requests depending on the nature of it.
Housekeeping: The Civitai Family
I want to talk about this platform for a second. The road with Civitai has been bumpy. We’ve been through the changing of the guard, the shifting rules, and the era where media outlets (Like 404 Media in late 2023) sold a lot of lies that harmed this community. We lived through a whole moment once of people trying to merge everything under the sun, and attempt to claim legal property over everyone's trademarks. Despite all of that, Civitai has been a "family" level home for me. My experience on this platform has been positive for the most part, and quite the learning journey. Nothing is ever perfect, but what's a family without a few arguments, sadness and a rocky bumpy road?
Here is what the immediate future looks like:
Account Changes:
I will likely be renaming this account soon. Not to run away, but to decouple it from things in such a way that doesn't LIE about my endeavors into AI, but doesn't keep my focus into it. Nearly 7000 followers, so it's important not to let anyone down.We are LIKELY deleting this account for safety and sanity reasons of our own volition, it is not because anyone is harming us directly, as it is our own mental health that is driving a wedge between our professional journey and otherwise.Branding Changes: "Ktiseos Nyx" will eventually shift to being strictly the development arm rather than all things AI.
The Discord: The Discord server is staying up for now. However, please be patient with me. 99% of the activity right now is scam bots, and I am the only one with the ban hammer. It will likely be merged back into the main discord of ours, and small amounts of AI activity within reason (no NSFW due to discord's new age verification system).
Buzz & Banking: I tried hard to earn enough Buzz to utilize the new banking system to make this sustainable, but I mistook the timing and the percentage requirements and ended up not meeting the threshold. The cost to subscribe and try again is simply out of my budget. Because of this, once I am ready to "hang my hat" in the coming months, I will likely stop checking notifications here entirely.
Model Details: You'll see in the next section how to handle your own personal archives of my content. I want to stipulate and stress: I am not responsible for any content created with any of my models. (Unless I'm proven to be the one that generated the images - and that has to be that the files are on my drive, and are likely attached to my accounts.) I have had anxiety and fears about downstream use causing legal issues. While this is highly unlikely, I really do need to stress that point. IP infringement might be the only thing that would hang over my head, but then again when you're my age: I already saw Napster get shut down.. and Pirate bay!
The Models, Accounts & Archiving
Over the coming months, I will be auditing my page.
WHAT WILL GO: ALMOST EVERYTHING. We're likely going to delete this, and then figure out a way to allow content from our HF to be organized in a way that allows all backed up content to STILL EXIST but without attachment to us.
Regarding Archiving:
I know many of you archive things anyway. If a model is not existing on this profile, or on Terra's or Angel's profiles, and you have a copy and want to upload it to Civitai, TensorArt, Moescape, or otherwise—you have my permission. Don't willy nilly just back the whole profile up to Huggingface, you'll run out of space in about five minutes and you will end up having rate limits. It isn't about that "you can't" it's that i've released so much content since early 2023 that you'll have a hard time organizing it all.
Please let me know in the comments if there are specific models you want left up.
Will other accounts tied to mine shut down: No, Angel's really only got one or two loras up, and teaching Terra to upload stuff to Civitai when they got their PC fixed in 2025 was like pulling teeth to be quite fair. IF Angel decides to still partake in releasing merges if he decides that he wants to somehow do that - that's up to him. MY account is tied to my email, and my discord, so while it's been our shared one for uploading: I'm the only one who can login and upload.
Will you still release before you finish: I highly doubt it. The timing it takes is the other cost that really grinds into me. I rent a GPU a few times a month to get things done for testing not only the training system i'm developing: but also to make content and test loras. It takes close to a half hour to an hour to get a system fully up and running between getting things downloaded and installed depending on speed and other factors. Other factors largely being: Searching Huggingface for our content, and other content we want to mix with and test with. While it could only cost us 5 USD at max for a 10 hour session: what better use of that 10 hours should i have been doing? (Showering, Cleaning house, walking more, getting healthier, being far more present in my relationships.)
Do you have unreleased content: Yes, and if anyone would like to preview these and take these on after I have chats with my partners - you're welcome to it. However, give me time because i'm not sure yet if i AM going to still release these or not. Most of what's been created was a mess of back and forths this time that worked more than they should've but they have a lot of odd noise issues.
Do you consent to the re-mixing, merging etc of any of your content: Yes, just be aware of upstream and downstream use permissions.
The only other large condition: DO NOT LINK BACK TO ME for safety and sanity reasons: While I ASCERTAIN that I do not want to LIE about my activity in AI: I Don't want our future to be entirely woven within it to a point that the decoupling was in vein. Moving back into art spaces that we once struggled to exist in, are extremely pedantic, and the more AI that's still connected to us: THE WORSE it will be.
Will you take donations
No.
That would sadly now be profiting off the backs of copyrightable content, and we'd be even MORE hypocritical for that.
We appreciate your support.
The only donations we'd accept is if they're not in relation to content that is our AI, if you're willing to just donate for the sake of our future that is up to you.
But future forward: No donations or payments for AI related content EXCEPTION would only be our development and programs. WE will not be stopping our AI agentic assisted journey with web and desktop app developing.
As for the models that are based on my art?
Legality wise: I don't own the weights of SDXL nor IllustriousXL or SD 1.5 or PonyXL. Earlier illustrious ones are nice, and the later ones devolved. Look they're based on our art, but they're trained on SDXL based backings. OR Flux.
While we ascertain that "HEY LOOK ITS NOT COPYRIGHT IF ITS OUR WORK": The greater ART community will argue otherwise.
Because we'rea lready working on PROBABLY deleting this account, there will be loras and checkpoint backups at huggingface spots.
Final Thoughts
This is about preservation—preserving my mental health, my limited finances, and my soul in a tech bubble that often feels like a Blade Runner dystopia.
I want to thank my partners, I want to thank all my peers, and the platforms that have pushed me up.
I apologize for the rash changes after we promised a smooth transition... Our mental health comes first, and our safety needs to prevail in this.
While nobody's at fault anymore, there have been direct events in the past that have still contributed to a feeling of nigh impossible unfixable burnout. Consistent misuse of our content, as well as the idea that all over social media we've been called countless contextual things that make no sense at all.
We appreciate all your support.
EDIT:
We've come to a halt on a few things on our journey. Unpublishing copyrightable works harms the search function and the prisma database for Civitai. Yet at the same time if we were to delete our whole account that would leave a gaping hole in the database.
We're not here to cause issues in harming Civitai: But there's a chance we may for sanity's sake remove our profile.
Yes we don't want to lie about the fact that we've done and trained AI models, and been involved: But the problematic factor is that it has actually harmed our ability to get work in non AI spheres because of the attachment.
WE WILL ENDEAVOUR to think on this before we entirely delete the whole account.
AGAIN: PLEASE BE AWARE that there will still for a while be huggingface access to a lot of these consistent items.
As for the link list:
We're trying to also decouple AI from our social media so the less amount of "SOCIAL MEDIA" sharing we do with our names including the discord? -- The better <3
Not only that but there's no use joining the KNX discord as we are working on restructuring a few things.
Please please feel free to message me on discord, I will no longer be in many AI spheres after this week.
The idea that our social media days are now run by automated AI Agentic software and people calling it "AGI" is a small format of why i'm burned out. Chasing tech tail is like chasing a Wall Street circle jerk bubble: I don't want much part of it anymore if it harms the people I love.