Flooded with AI-generated images, some art communities ban them completely

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From ars technica:

Confronted with an overwhelming amount of artificial-intelligence-generated artwork flooding in, some online art communities have taken dramatic steps to ban or curb its presence on their sites, including Newgrounds, Inkblot Art, and Fur Affinity, according to Andy Baio of Waxy.org.

Baio, who has been following AI art ethics closely on his blog, first noticed the bans and reported about them on Friday. So far, major art communities DeviantArt and ArtStation have not made any AI-related policy changes, but some vocal artists on social media have complained about how much AI art they regularly see on those platforms as well.

. . . .

The arrival of widely available image synthesis models such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion has provoked an intense online battle between artists who view AI-assisted artwork as a form of theft (more on that below) and artists who enthusiastically embrace the new creative tools.

Established artist communities are at a tough crossroads because they fear non-AI artwork getting drowned out by an unlimited supply of AI-generated art, and yet the tools have also become notably popular among some of their members.

In banning art created through image synthesis in its Art Portal, Newgrounds wrote, “We want to keep the focus on art made by people and not have the Art Portal flooded with computer-generated art.”

. . . .

The current wave of image synthesis tools allows users to type in a written description (called a “prompt”) and output a matching image, almost like magic. The results often need cherry-picking and dedication to get just right, but with a skillfully crafted prompt, the results can imitate the works of human artists with sometimes stunning detail.

The most successful prompts often reference existing artists and art websites by name but rarely alone. Mixing artists can create innovative new stylistic blends. For example, here is the prompt that created the robotic woman in the center of the image at the top of this article in Stable Diffusion:

Beautiful crying! female mechanical android!, half portrait, intricate detailed environment, photorealistic!, intricate, elegant, highly detailed, digital painting, artstation, concept art, smooth, sharp focus, illustration, art by artgerm and greg rutkowski and alphonse mucha (Seed 79409656)

The most popular image synthesis models use the latent diffusion technique to create novel artwork by analyzing millions of images without consent from artists or copyright holders. In the case of Stable Diffusion, those images come sourced directly from the Internet, courtesy of the LAION-5B database. (Images found on the Internet often come with descriptions attached, which is ideal for training AI models.)

Link to the rest at ars technica

PG says AI is here and, absent draconian government interference, it’s going to stay here and proliferate. He’ll reiterate that AI Writing is already available for short-form work – a paragraph, a page – but it will definitely develop in sophistication and expand its capabilities just like ai art has.

There’s a search engine that’s devoted to finding ai art online – Lexica. The images PG examined included the prompt the creator entered into the ai art system to generate the image. ArtStation includes similar content.

Here are three images PG picked at random off Lexica and their accompanying written ai prompts which have been used to create the image:

full body portrait character concept art, anime key visual of a confused baby with googles, studio lighting delicate features finely detailed perfect face directed gaze, gapmoe yandere grimdark
Portrait of big bird’s child, big bird morph child morph, digital painting, realistic shaded, realistic shaded lighting, fan art, pix
Symmetry!! product render poster puzzle cube scifi, glowing lines! intricate, elegant, highly detailed, digital painting, artstation, concept art, smooth, sharp focus,

4 thoughts on “Flooded with AI-generated images, some art communities ban them completely”

  1. “The most popular image synthesis models use the latent diffusion technique to create novel artwork by analyzing millions of images without consent from artists or copyright holders.”

    Fair use, fair use, fair use.
    Now get over yourselves.

    ” In the case of Stable Diffusion, those images come sourced directly from the Internet, courtesy of the LAION-5B database. (Images found on the Internet often come with descriptions attached, which is ideal for training AI models.)”

    Right. Open internet. Fair game for anybody and anything.
    Don’t want the spiders and ‘bots to see your “precious”? Don’t put it on the open internet.
    There’s this thing, you see, called a paywall that ensures only paying customers see your stuff.

    The onus is on you not to be lazy.

  2. Think the guys banning AI images know they are in a game of Whack-A-Mole?

    A person can create an image or a novel for their own personal actualization and enjoyment, or they can do it to sell. If they are taking it to the market, consumers will decide, not curators, not bans, not bloggers.

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