Drifters

After XCOPY released the Grifters as CC0, I downloaded all 666 and fine-tuned a diffusion model on them. Three variants came out of it: aliens, punks, zombies.

The name: drifters = diffusion + grifter.

The conceptual root is Kirby Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix — nothing is made in a vacuum, all art builds on prior art. Using CC0 work as training data is that principle made literal. XCOPY made the Grifters free so that people could do exactly this.

The original intent was to sell the Drifters and use proceeds to buy a real Grifter. XCOPY is the number one artist in web3. I eventually bought one — but it took all the projects selling slowly over years, not Drifters alone.