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Artist Banned From r/Art Because Mods Thought They Used AI (vice.com) 205

Posted by BeauHD from the I-don't-believe-you dept.
A moderator on Reddit'sReddit's largest art forum with 22 million members went on lockdown this week after debates and accusations about what constitutes AI-generated art went viral. Motherboard reports: On December 27, a digital artist named Ben Moran tweeted that moderators of r/Art banned them from the subreddit for breaking their "no AI art" rule. Moran had posted an image of their digital illustration, titled "a muse in warzone," and moderators removed it and banned them from the subreddit. Moran posted a screenshot of the direct message thread with a mod of the subreddit, where they appealed the ban and claimed that they didn't use AI at all: "I can give you guys the process or the PSD file of that painting," Moran wrote, claiming that they're not using any AI-supported technology and that the punishment is "not right." They also linked to their portfolio on DeviantArt.

"I don't believe you," a moderator for r/art replied. "Even if you did 'paint' it yourself, it's so obviously an Al-prompted design that it doesn't matter. If you really are a 'serious' artist, then you need to find a different style, because A) no one is going to believe when you say it's not Al, and B) the AI can do better in seconds what might take you hours. Sorry, it's the way of the world."

Moran told Motherboard that this piece was a commission from their Vietnam-based studio, Kart Studio, which was established three years ago. The studio consists of a group of digital artists who collaborate on pieces, they said. A full-body portrait with a complex background can cost upwards of $500, according to Kart Studio's website, with the studio sending the commissioner the art at various stages, including the initial sketch. For the muse illustration, a different artist started it, and Moran stepped in to complete it. It took Moran a month to complete (about 100 hours, they said) and they wanted to show the final piece to the community on Reddit.
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Artist Banned From r/Art Because Mods Thought They Used AI More

Artist Banned From r/Art Because Mods Thought They Used AI

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  • "I don't believe you" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06, 2023 @09:46PM (#63186560)
    (para) "Even if it's not AI generated it's something that could have been produced by AI" seems like a pretty pathetic argument. Sounds like the moderator went out on a limb, got it wrong, and was too proud or embarassed to reverse their decision and apologize to the artist.

    • Re:"I don't believe you" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Saturday January 07, 2023 @05:29AM (#63187086) Homepage

      It's characteristic of their level of hate for AI art. We're entering the "eating their own" stage for the anti-AI artists. The purity test has gone from "whole images made by AI with no artist intervention", to "the original image was made by AI, regardless of how much work the artist put into it after that", to "you can't touch anything that was ever touched by AI art tools when you make your images", you "you can't have a style that reminds us of AI art".

      Just wait until they find out that AI upscalers (which many if not most anti-AI artists have used) like LDSR use the same or related technologies as AI art tools. Exactly where do those people think that fine detail that wasn't in the original image is coming from? Exactly what do they think those upscalers were trained on? AI art tools work by basically "seeing shapes in clouds" - starting with static and envisioning in detail that's not there but which helps make the image make more sense. If you start with a lower-res image and upscale, that detail wasn't there. It has to be imagined in.

      This genie isn't going back in the bottle. It makes for more efficient workflows. The corporate world adores efficiency. Adapt, quit, or confine yourself to niche markets. Same decision that non-digital artists had to make when digital art tools hit the scene. Same decision that painters had to make when cameras hit the scene. And each time, boy did the people who didn't want to change rage against the new technology. Reading artists whine about cameras is really amusing - they hated cameras being used for anything except for scientific documentation. Saw photographers as failed artists and hated them. Hated how the public fawned over photography. Saw it as artistically inept.

      But in the end, cameras won the field of "capturing realism", which forced painters to branch out into a whole slew of new art styles, which was actually the best thing that could have happened to the art world. And digital art tools likewise are now used by the vast majority of today's best artists. But oh did a lot of people rage about them taking over the art world too!

      Art will survive this. And thanks to Jevon's paradox [wikipedia.org], those who adapt will continue to work as artists (and no, CEOs with no artistic taste whose time is worth thousands of dollars per hour aren't by and large going to do art themselves when they can pay an actual artist with aesthetic sense $20/hr, just like CEOs don't generally design corporate logos, websites, merch, etc themselves even though they have ready access to the tools to do so). But those who refuse to adapt will be facing some very difficult choices.

      • The big difference is that previous technological breakthroughs like the invention of photography or cinema lead to another kind of art that cannot be confused with painting. The problem right now is that AI artwork is hard to distinguish from pixel art, other than the look and feel, and some artists do not acknowledge the tools they used. If I produce digital art I will be proud to label it as done with Inkscape, Blender or Krita. The problem is there is suspicion that some artists fail to acknowledge the

    • Re:"I don't believe you" (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Saturday January 07, 2023 @05:53AM (#63187104) Journal
      Itt's not just pathetic, it's objectively wrong. Suggesting that he can't be a serious artist unless he changes his style is an appeal to purity [wikipedia.org].
    • I suspect that if their studio's work, for which they charge ~$500 a piece, can be produced by AI in seconds, they've got more pressing concerns than forum modding policies.

  • Reddit moderation is insufferable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SethDove ( 10197641 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @09:55PM (#63186578)
    I basically stopped going to Reddit because the moderators are insane. I once posted a skyline shot of the city I live in, and in that city's subReddit. It was removed, and I asked why it was removed. They said "self-promotion". I asked what that meant, since I am not anything to promote. Was told that since I hosted the image on my own website that meant I was self-promoting. Even though I am not a professional photographer, sell nothing, and have no ads on my *very* basic site. I was just sharing a picture I took. Just crazy.
    • You have to be an idiot to do work for a company for free.
      • Not exactly. These dumbfucks are sociopaths who get a rush from having power over strangers. They have no power in thier own life so they call the cops when they smell a smell they don't like, hear a noise they don't like, when a neighbor's grass grows too tall. You know the type, constantly offended by the trivial inconveniences of modern society.
        • They absolutely fucking hate it when they threaten you with a ban, you point out that you're not such a sad fuck that you care about karma points on a social media site and that as you can set up a new account in seconds bans are meaning less. "I'll ban you from Reddit!!!!!" "Crack on son, I don't give a shit about upvotes and karma points".

    • I got banned for a sub because someone doxed me and I told them to go fuck themselves. Apparently that makes me "toxic". Anyway I went all in an PM'd the mods and told them to go fuck themselves too. They threatened to extend my 2 week ban to 120days, and I said that really isn't a threat as I'm not interested in ever going back to a sub that toxic, and ask them what I would need to call them to make my ban permanent. Then they permanently banned me for politely asking the question.

      Reddit's moderators reall

  • They don't get to see it. Problem solved.

    Or put it on an AI reddit thing with a note that it's not AI and to argue with the art mod about taking it down.

  • "It's the Way Of The World." (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @10:05PM (#63186592)

    What a pompous prick.

    Well I guess tinpot dictators gotta tinpot dictate.

    The studio's art is worth a look. Consistent high quality although I don't find their designs all that inspirational.

    • What a pompous prick.

      Well yeah. He's a moderator on reddit. It's part of the minimum job requirements.

  • ...I'm sure that poor, starving, starving artist is more than happy to have be getting "exposure" due to this "controversy". They've probably been hoping for something like this...and very well may have engineered it.

    Can't seem to get to DeviantArt right now...but if the image in the article is what started this controversy...yeah, it does look like pretty generic digital art these days.

    Which is fine...if that's what you're into.

  • Subject (Score:5, Insightful)

    by schematix ( 533634 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @10:37PM (#63186662) Homepage
    Over moderation is going to be what ends Reddit. Moderators of the subs and the site in general are all on a power trip banning people for the littlest things. Canâ(TM)t even have an educated debate with someone without someone reporting a post hoping for cheap payback.
    • Precisely. I am a mod of a few subreddits, but I rarely do any moderation because there is little need. I am not an authoritarian or zealot... the users are free to upvote insightful posts and comments and downvote spam or off-topic matters. The only time I actually step in is if there's a bot which excessively floods the subreddit with spam that is obvious or if there's illegal content.

      But other subreddits are typically the opposite. If you don't align with the groupthink, you're toast. I only really

    • I have been banned not for a particular post in a subredit but for my posting history... no shit

    • Many subreddits indeed simply have rules because they want to have rules it seems, not because something would go wrong without them.

      I remember Unixporn having such strict rules about what one's submission must conform to that many people couldn't even post their setup at all because there was no wat for it to conform to the rules. As in the rules demand that it show the icon theme and GTK or and Qt theme which many people don't even use in their setup, so everything posted there ended up looking the same.

      N

  • It reminds me of when I got banned from a TFC server back in 1998 (maybe more than 1 server, I can't remember) because someone thought I was using some kind of cheat. No, I was just a semi-skilled sniper who got lucky sometimes.

    • I was once reported as a cheater using an aimbot in one game and then kicked out of the next for being 'useless'.

      Luck, good and bad. A lot of people are assholes, you give them anonymity and the trait is more likely to present. Give them power, and it's almost guaranteed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zuriel ( 1760072 )
      If you aren't cheating, getting reported for cheating is the highest compliment another player can give you.

  • Baffling (Score:3)

    by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @10:56PM (#63186680)

    I've just gone down a contemporary-art rabbithole: I looked at the artist's 43 pictures on DeviantArt (had to skip the "sensitive content" ones because you need an account to see them). Then I realized I didn't know much about modern AI art (I'd only seen a few examples), so I spent some time looking at images of that.

    And... I don't think most of these digital paintings are AI-generated. They don't have the typical "tells" of AI art-- crazy hands, missing or misplaced shadows, weird shapes that look pretty but don't seem to correspond to an identifiable physical object. Also, I've noticed that *most* AI art tends to have some element of either a) surrealism or b) the grotesque. Trees are growing out of heads, a lip or an eye will appear to be deformed, etc. Very few of the artist's pieces have elements like that.

    Except... there *were* a few pieces I wondered about. One is a portrait of a girl with two differently-colored eyes. The eyes are not only differently colored but are different sizes. There are also two of the "mecha" pieces that looked like they had some CG composited into them and then retouched. (It's also possible that this guy is just a very good draftsman).

    I noticed that one commenter wrote "great painting... do you have any videos of your process?" (This was under a very CGI-looking mecha painting). It may be that painters of the future will have to "show their work", by putting videos of themselves painting up on Youtube.

    • â¦videos that will eventually be auto-generatedâ¦

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      I think it's weird that when people talk about AI art, they only talk about it in the context of "person just types in a few words, generates a handful of images, picks something out, and posts it as-is".

      In places like the SD reddit, that's rarely done. Most people extensively postprocess their images, going back and forth between SD and Photoshop/GIMP/Krita, to fix any weirdness, then AI upscale, then refix newly-exposed weirdness, then AI upscale... repeat until it's as detailed and perfect as you're goi

      • I think it's weird that when people talk about AI art, they only talk about it in the context of "person just types in a few words, generates a handful of images, picks something out, and posts it as-is".

        In places like the SD reddit, that's rarely done. Most people extensively postprocess their images, going back and forth between SD and Photoshop/GIMP/Krita, to fix any weirdness, then AI upscale, then refix newly-exposed weirdness, then AI upscale... repeat until it's as detailed and perfect as you're going for.

        That's an interesting point. It did occur to me (especially looking at the mecha drawings) that the process could be a hybrid of some kind. For instance, the artist could use a computer to generate the "mecha" figure that is composited into a hand-drawn painting; he could be painting on top of a computer-generated element or on top of a photograph (e.g., one mecha painting has an urban background that looks a bit like a retouched photograph). Obviously, there's a long tradition of artists painting on top

  • "I don't believe you," a moderator for r/art replied. "Even if you did 'paint' it yourself, it's so obviously an Al-prompted design that it doesn't matter. If you really are a 'serious' artist, then you need to find a different style, because A) no one is going to believe when you say it's not Al, and B) the AI can do better in seconds what might take you hours. Sorry, it's the way of the world."

    more precisely, it's the way of some loser douchebag abusing undeserved authority, making totally unacceptable claims and even violating basic logic to fail at supporting them.

    which by the way isn't all that uncommon in moderated forums ... so, yeah, in a sense it's the way of the world.

  • The article doesn't really cover it, but the "offending" image was cover art for the book Mandate Of Heaven. That will be book 11 in the Beneath the Dragoneye Moons [royalroad.com] series by Selkie Myth [amazon.com].

  • thank the deity that surely doesn't exist (Score:3)

    by Big Hairy Gorilla ( 9839972 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @11:38PM (#63186738)
    for a topic that turns people into screaming insulting monsters and replaces trump, "stolen... um...things", gender pronouns, de-colonization, wokeness as the single issue that people "care" about. Amen brothers and sisters.

    Also, It's pretty clear that nobody is going to get off the couch if AI will get off the couch for you.
  • AI with art is cool by me. Image filters made by so-called AI can help make some awesome pieces. I like to composite the filtered images on my phone with Snapseed. You can do some pretty crazy shit erm art with a few simple tools. If AI happens to be one of them, who gives a damn? Some mod on Reddit? Well cry me a river snowflakes, the world is changing, mainly because my AI is hacking everything so I can use that to experiment on everyone using psychoinformatics. Don't like it? Well, draw a picture so we c
  • Digital art is always using 'AI' as applications like photoshop are using calculations to let you create something and you just guide it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      Yep. Until AI has our human level of understanding, humans will be needed for guidance, inspiration, and postprocessing. AI art today doesn't even understand things like the concept of "a red box on a blue box". People confuse "prettiness" with understanding.

      If AI gets to the point where it is better than us at understanding and in general being human, then you have bigger things to worry about than AI art. Because by that point, it's the Singularity, and you're either going to be relaxing on a beach whil

  • That's how things roll in Reddit. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What you're seeing here is not an exceptionally arsehole Reddit moderator; it is the typical Reddit moderator in action. r/theoryofreddit banning and libelling users because they disagreed with the mod, r/food because the users said the taboo words "chicken sandwich" (yup), r/shokugekinosoma because they voiced discontentment over the series, this is everywhere in the site.

    And that's because Reddit moderators are recruited from the userbase. And the typical Reddit user is unable to think for more than a mil

  • Reddit mods banning people for fuck all reason is no story, that's business as usual for Reddit. Is it one because it now involves AI?

    Is AI the new "on the internet"? Something that turns a non-story into something we need to have on /.?

  • If you really are a 'serious' artist, then you need to find a different style....

    Honestly, I think the moderator should be called out for that.

  • they bleed...

  • Banned by someone who isn't an artist? (Score:3)

    by fygment ( 444210 ) on Saturday January 07, 2023 @10:57AM (#63187334)

    The work looks like 'art' and to claim it was possibly 'inspired' by 'AI art' is just seems ridiculous. Art is inspired by many things isn't it?

    Interesting thought though: if Dali or Picasso were not known and posted their work now, would they be banned because their work was inspired by 'AI art'?

  • What is happening on Reddit is death throws of a social system that is not capable of agreeing to disagree.
  • Wait until the mod learns where the AI learned to make its AI art: The internet from REAL human artists! If everyone stops making "AI looking" artwork, the AI will just copy that new style. The mod's dismissiveness is just about as ignorant as the derps here complaining about the writer's singular "they" as a violation of their own free speech rights.

  • Policy clearly runs afoul of ADA (Score:3)

    by nbritton ( 823086 ) on Saturday January 07, 2023 @12:06PM (#63187400)

    On its face, these anti-AI policies are clearly going to adversely discriminate against protected groups, disabled persons are expressly allowed the use of a computer under the ADA as a reasonable accommodation, end of story.

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