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paperghostSaw an interesting article on Equestria Daily in my RSS feed reader:
Crossing the AI Threshold, It's Becoming Impossible to Tell
Avoid reading this if you're touchy or easily offended on this topic, or can't take a rando's post with a grain of salt... This isn't a well-researched thinkpiece.
My opinion on AI art is less extreme than it was in late 2022; I was unwell back then and was posting screeds about it being Satanic on my now-deleted Twitter... I'm still at a point where I just can't see it as a good thing or support it. I accept it exists and don't think it should be illegal outside of extreme specific circumstances (simulated CP, deepfake porn, etc.), just have some kind of legal restrictions on the technology behind it. I know both parts of that are an unpopular opinion, especially the last part to anti-government freedom types, but I really don't have a doable answer otherwise. It's not going away, and legally restricting the technological development makes more sense than going full authoritarian and banning it or anything that might be AI generated.
I'm fine with AI as a reference or thumbnailing tool not unlike photobashing. I've used AI images as reference the same way I've used photos and art as reference or tried to visualize in a freebie generator, but that's it. Most casual defenses I've read of it really don't jibe with me. "It makes superficially pretty pictures and people who don't have good drawing skills happy" comes off as treating everything else wrong like the power used behind it (not unlike NFTs) or scraping people's art without permission as collateral damage. (And no, I don't see using someone's art as a dataset or LORA to be akin to taking inspiration... It's not a real person. Technically ML / machine learning is a more accurate phrase than artificial intelligence.)
Anyway, that article is "part three" to the first post about MLP AI images and the later follow up on how to identify the flaws in it. When I first saw MLP AI, it legitimately made me depressed because of how "convincing" a lot of it looked. There's over a decade of amateur fanart scraped to look like casual fanart minus the hiccups with certain designs. I find it odd that Sethisto is claiming that it's becoming "impossible" to tell between AI/ML images and fanart when I can clock all the images shared as AI? Sethisto has been running EQD for almost 15 years and has seen more fanart than I have. I fell out of the fandom sphere after 2013, but in the early AI image wave I could "clock" some cues taken from popular artists, but now the new AI images evolved into their own uncanny valley style trained from a LORA.
This is likely because I've been doing digital art for over 20 years since I was 10 or 11, possibly longer if you count fucking around on my parent's PC in 1998-2000 before internet access. I can get how a normie or someone who doesn't know anything about digital art could be fooled by these, but they "feel" legit machine generated. It's a combination of all the visual cues that popular artists do but in a strange inorganic way. There's an uncanny vibe of being "too perfect" but the errors when zooming in are mechanical and not a slip of the wrist or taking shortcuts. It's a bizarre hybrid of Patreon coomer quality and the glory days of MLP DeviantART. The Luna image is weirdly "clocky" to me because she has the cute Marenlicious-esque face, socks (lol), has a cutesy bellybutton I've seen some softcore artists draw, it's supposed to be cute and comfy but comes off deeply "uncanny" in the "this is too perfect" and mechanically constructed to be appealing way.
This is the part when people will get offended or think "I draw like that, are you saying my art looks like AI?" - No, and I really aint a fan of witch hunting randos under suspicion they might be AI... This is literally just a subjective opinion going off ~vibes~ and looking at digital art online for decades. (This is why I don't post longer opinion things more often because I feel like there are so many angles to be read in bad faith and "attacked" over when this isn't a huge deal.) One reason I stopped my AI rampage is I realized it goes into weird religious territory to talk about "soul" that human art allegedly has and whatnot, when that's not the actual issue. I don't know what was up with my head when I posting about this being Satanic years ago, lol...
I like Sethisto's end of this post:
Crossing the AI Threshold, It's Becoming Impossible to Tell
Avoid reading this if you're touchy or easily offended on this topic, or can't take a rando's post with a grain of salt... This isn't a well-researched thinkpiece.
My opinion on AI art is less extreme than it was in late 2022; I was unwell back then and was posting screeds about it being Satanic on my now-deleted Twitter... I'm still at a point where I just can't see it as a good thing or support it. I accept it exists and don't think it should be illegal outside of extreme specific circumstances (simulated CP, deepfake porn, etc.), just have some kind of legal restrictions on the technology behind it. I know both parts of that are an unpopular opinion, especially the last part to anti-government freedom types, but I really don't have a doable answer otherwise. It's not going away, and legally restricting the technological development makes more sense than going full authoritarian and banning it or anything that might be AI generated.
I'm fine with AI as a reference or thumbnailing tool not unlike photobashing. I've used AI images as reference the same way I've used photos and art as reference or tried to visualize in a freebie generator, but that's it. Most casual defenses I've read of it really don't jibe with me. "It makes superficially pretty pictures and people who don't have good drawing skills happy" comes off as treating everything else wrong like the power used behind it (not unlike NFTs) or scraping people's art without permission as collateral damage. (And no, I don't see using someone's art as a dataset or LORA to be akin to taking inspiration... It's not a real person. Technically ML / machine learning is a more accurate phrase than artificial intelligence.)
Anyway, that article is "part three" to the first post about MLP AI images and the later follow up on how to identify the flaws in it. When I first saw MLP AI, it legitimately made me depressed because of how "convincing" a lot of it looked. There's over a decade of amateur fanart scraped to look like casual fanart minus the hiccups with certain designs. I find it odd that Sethisto is claiming that it's becoming "impossible" to tell between AI/ML images and fanart when I can clock all the images shared as AI? Sethisto has been running EQD for almost 15 years and has seen more fanart than I have. I fell out of the fandom sphere after 2013, but in the early AI image wave I could "clock" some cues taken from popular artists, but now the new AI images evolved into their own uncanny valley style trained from a LORA.
This is likely because I've been doing digital art for over 20 years since I was 10 or 11, possibly longer if you count fucking around on my parent's PC in 1998-2000 before internet access. I can get how a normie or someone who doesn't know anything about digital art could be fooled by these, but they "feel" legit machine generated. It's a combination of all the visual cues that popular artists do but in a strange inorganic way. There's an uncanny vibe of being "too perfect" but the errors when zooming in are mechanical and not a slip of the wrist or taking shortcuts. It's a bizarre hybrid of Patreon coomer quality and the glory days of MLP DeviantART. The Luna image is weirdly "clocky" to me because she has the cute Marenlicious-esque face, socks (lol), has a cutesy bellybutton I've seen some softcore artists draw, it's supposed to be cute and comfy but comes off deeply "uncanny" in the "this is too perfect" and mechanically constructed to be appealing way.
This is the part when people will get offended or think "I draw like that, are you saying my art looks like AI?" - No, and I really aint a fan of witch hunting randos under suspicion they might be AI... This is literally just a subjective opinion going off ~vibes~ and looking at digital art online for decades. (This is why I don't post longer opinion things more often because I feel like there are so many angles to be read in bad faith and "attacked" over when this isn't a huge deal.) One reason I stopped my AI rampage is I realized it goes into weird religious territory to talk about "soul" that human art allegedly has and whatnot, when that's not the actual issue. I don't know what was up with my head when I posting about this being Satanic years ago, lol...
I like Sethisto's end of this post:
We never did talk about AI writing before either did we? It's funny how everyone just collectively gave up on that one, which isn't surprising considering how even university professors are throwing in the towel on that front. I admit, I've genned many a choose your own adventure pony story in my time since AIdungeon appeared back almost half a decade ago. Hell, It's the only thing Grok is currently the best at due to its "unhinged mode" and free access. Having tested the limits of its filter, I can confirm that there just isn't one, no matter what horrifying subject matter you ask it for. Hopefully art can fight just a little longer while the corporate overlords fumble around with their search engines and agents now that they are done ruining it for us writers!I can't buy into any of the doomer bullshit going around. Not about Trump, not about AI/ML, etc. I don't think AI images are going to "win". The 2020s have been nonstop internet related horrors at once; NFTs, Eclipse/Wix, Lowtax's suicide, AI bullshit, Musk buying Twitter and is closer to being Trump's VP than Vance despite being South African, Dragoneer's death, etc etc. I feel like it's going to go the direction the 2000s and have a period after that's slightly less chaotic in comparison. Pretty convenient to whine over how the world is ending while doing nothing about it.
Now go commission an artist! Honestly this is all completely irrelevant if people keep supporting them.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-18 05:31 pm (UTC)weirdly the one tell for ai art for me that i don't see mentioned as much is how high contrast and focused on the centre of the picture it always is with the gradient (either on the background or just in general) - human art is a lot less forced and lets the eye wander.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 01:23 am (UTC)This is another "clocky" thing I wasn't sure how to describe, it ties into being "too perfect" in a mechanical way. Even Patreon-quality art with backgrounds doesn't have that much focus or detail in places.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-18 11:39 pm (UTC)I hope that machine generated formulaic output will continue to be fully in the public domain and not copyright-able as that will put a damper of the desire of companies replace their creatives with "AI's. That isn't going to stop trolls and spammers from flooding cyberspace with slop as their business model is solely focused on traps and short-term gain, often by illegal means.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 01:22 am (UTC)