I see AI Supernatural images going around again and they turned off the comments underneath their posts. Sigh. So the only way to give a heads up to people that it is AI is to reblog it, which I will not do. Not a big fan of publically naming blogs but I think it’s fair for people to know that this is AI-generated and not handmade. Please remember AI is stealing from artists 😅
I was asked how I know it’s AI because it looks scarily a lot like real art and there are a few context clues. I’ve written my MA thesis on AI ‘artists’ on Instagram and hence have looked at a lot of AI accounts so for me it kind of came with the look of it. A lot of these images look like created by midjourney. They have this very similar filter and lighting and use of color that’s hard for me to explain but appear to be a blend of smooth photography, cartoon, and anime. However, of course there are also people who paint like this. After all, AI is using a database of stolen art by artist to generate stuff. So what else can you look at?
What always helps is to look at the coherency between posts. The account that I linked for example has lots of different topics it covers, not just different fandoms, but completely unrelated things. Also the style - though artists like to switch it up, so it’s also a thing to be careful with, but usually they don’t change their style completely every new post. This account does. You can best see it on their instagram where they made one post of Castiel with a ton of images in different styles.
Another advice is to look at the frequency. How often does the account post? Think about how making art takes time and energy. Sure, some artists are faster than others, but we like to give ourselves some time to rest and get inspiration, and also it’s humanly impossible to post more detailed art in a frequency higher than 1-2 a day, and that’s when the artist is extremely productive. As said in one of my earlier posts, I take around 9-40 hours to make a piece. So if you see stuff that’s more detailed than something like lineart being posted every day without a break, or even multiple times a day, that’s a giant indicator it’s AI.
And lastly, what I found the most indicating of something being AI: the image description. You know how making art takes care and love and effort? Same with the description. If you post an image without any description on here, that’s pretty suspicious. Sure, sometimes the image speaks for itself, but that’s not with the AI images that I mean. With the person I linked, they posted like 10 images of Supernatural in one instagram post with just the caption 'Supernatural’. Nothing more. Look, if I had made 10 drawings of Supernatural, I would space them out so people can take their time to look at it separately. Because making art takes time, too. And if I did a compilation of all my art, I would say so, because I feel proud of it or something. There’s always emotion in making art. Commitment. So that’s what the description is too. It’s not just thrown out into the world most of the time. And it’s usually not in the way of how 'AI artists’ present themselves as entrepreneurs with big ideas either - you know what I mean if you look up midjourney on Instagram.
With this particular blog, I was right. Here you can see how they say the images they post were artificially generated. I just wish they would give more transparency in general, but that’s the trick with AI - people love presenting themselves to be artists without actually doing the work sadly.
Bringing the receipts to the table 😅 Also because I know a wall of text is a lot to read and visual indicators might help. But yeah remember they said AI-generated in the post that I linked but for the rest stuff isn’t tagged (also look at the age of their account. Usually also an indicator if someone has been around for years they were there before AI generators took off)
See how different these styles are? Sure, they all look more on the cartoon/comic side of things, but the shading between the two Castiels is pretty different. Look at the way the nose is drawn, too. It looks like two different interpretations of Castiel in a way. And then the Dean one is again using different shading technique and detail. Lots of clothing folds suddenly, too. But honestly, outside of comparing them, it is still hard to tell if stuff is AI-generated. After all, AI is using existing art to generate something. It’s just also the context clues listed above that are pretty telling.
Also one thing that I want to make clear 😅 I’ve seen a lot of people say that arguing anti AI is somehow elitist and corporate and exclusionary. It is not. Don’t let people make you believe that. It’s literally the opposite. It’s pro small artist, pro people trying themselves out, and against big corporations abusing small artists’ working power by lowering the job security, payment and standards through threatening to use AI in an already existing gig-to-gig and working for free creative industry that mostly effects marginalized people first - people of color, queer people, people from lower class origins with no safety when money runs dry, disabled people. It’s also very against pro-AI Elon Musk entrepreneur type of people.
To explain back I have to go back a little in history. You need to know that back in medieval times and earlier, visual art was a craft first. Something similar to pottery or making wine. The name of the person making visual art often wasn’t even known, people did not put their name on it. Art was financed by art academies, rich patrons, the church. But before that, as I said, art was a craft first. A lot changed in the Romantic era, and that is when the image of the artist we have nowadays was born. That suffering genius with their unique vision able to make things visible to the average public through their art, starving for their passion, being nearly supernaturally talented at it. All of that? That’s Romanticisms fault. Because in Romanticism, artists’ audience changed. Suddenly rich traders were their main source of income, and art was now addressed at the big public. With new media coming up such as print, this just became more and more. Artists had no job safety anymore, no support by rich patrons and the academy. Instead, it was a brutal situation with too many artists and no money for most of them. You had to make yourself a name. You had to put on a performance in order to not starve. Hence the image of the artist genius. You only could not starve if you stood out.
So what does this have to do with AI? A lot of AI 'artists’ loooove to come back to the image of the Romantic artist. Because if they present themselves as this modern genius who uses technology because of their unique vision but the average person just cannot understand that because they are not enlightened and hence criticize them, if they make themselves this untouchable persona, if they present art not as a craft but instead the idea as the only thing that matters, then they can hide that they are actually not making art. They hide that art is a craft that takes time to learn and to make because they want to shift the attention to them to make money and put on a performance, and because they then can present AI as valuable as handdrawn paintings. So don’t forget where this is coming from.
The image of the Romantic artist has been used for years in the creative industries to put small artists under horrendous working conditions. Oh so you want to be paid a fair income and have job stability? That just means you are not passionate enough about your art to suffer for it. Look how fun this job is! Isn’t art what you were born for? So show us that by working for free and maybe we offer you a real job afterward! And as said, you know who is not getting jobs offered as fast? Right. People of color, queer people, disabled people. They are the ones who suffer from these already shitty conditions. So stop telling me that AI is the one who is accepting and including people when the cult around AI excludes real artists with every bone of their body. AI is only there for rich white cis straight Elon Musk intrepreneur type of guys who can sell themselves to other people on social media as this genius AI guy (bit like NFT guys really), and for big rich corporations who use AI to replace creative workers. It lowers the money self-employed artists can ask for a painting, because 'that AI guy can make it within an hour for way less and it looks great’. And also outside of work this is obviously damaging artists. Often it gets argued that AI is this entryway into making art. But that’s the issue. It is not. You do not learn from it. It’s a completely different thing than painting something. And I also have seen people arguing that AI is helping disabled people out - but actually AI takes from small disabled people, puts their art into the database for free without permission, and then spits out something other people make money on. So please do not believe the people who tell arguing against AI is elitist. Please
Made this for @xanthippe74 after reading her fics Vortex and Riptide and having one of the most emotional responses to a story I think I’ve ever had. It’s truly fantastic and I had to create something. I haven’t done traditional pencil art in probably like a decade, so this was fun and challenging. I will definitely be drawing more from this fic once I get my digital art stuff setup again.
“suffering feels religious if you do it right” no shut up it doesn’t. my friends laughing in the kitchen while i make dinner feels religious. the sun on my face after a long winter feels religious.
somebody in the notes posted this screenshot from the one & only, ursula k let guin. and now i’m screaming wtf
