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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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/r/art, having a normal one:

https://twitter.com/reddit_lies/status/1610669909842825222

If you'd prefer not to click, it's a screenshot of a mod communication in /r/art where a mod, believing that a particular user had uploaded AI art, has banned the user, and the user is appealing on the grounds that he did not use AI and in fact has a large DeviantArt portfolio in basically that style. The mod in question responded:

I don’t believe you. Even if you did “paint” it yourself, it’s so obviously an AI-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 AI, and B) the AI can do better in seconds what might take you hours. Sorry, it’s the way of the world.

This led to a predictable backlash resulting in /r/art temporarily going private, which appears to have lifted as of today.

I suppose I don't have too much useful commentary except to note that identifying what art is or is not ai-generated is probably an unsolvable challenge in the general case, and that forum bans for posting it are definitely going to get a lot of false-positives. You could probably do a 90% solution where you require that all art be accompanied by Photoshop .psd files; no current art generation system makes these (though I wouldn't put money on future systems not generating .psd files from text prompts). Though of course such a rule stops users from uploading anything that wasn't done in Photoshop.

I anticipate this problem will very rapidly worsen since Emad (the Stable Diffusion guy) posted https://twitter.com/EMostaque/status/1610811234676346880?cxt=HHwWgMC8sZKS4NosAAAA , which supposedly is a very-soon-to-be-released system that resolves most of the worst problems exhibited by image generation systems (such as malformed hands, an inability to grasp prepositions, and warped text.)

Take a look at rule 11 of the art subreddit:

No "AI" art, ever, and absolutely nothing "NFT", or anything similar.

Did we stutter?

No, seriously. Don't post it. Don't even even think about posting it.

AI = Permanent Ban. NFT = Permanent Ban.

Does anyone want a peanut?

Why NFTs are just /r/awfuleverything

Caveat: If you yourself wrote the AI, and you can prove it, contact us and we can discuss.

Note to artists: be prepared to refute accusations your art is AI-generated. Don't make a fuss, just link to indisputable proof. Also, have an established portfolio somewhere online so people are less likely to suspect your "amazing" art is an AI-generated one-off.

Did we stutter? Have a peanut? How much more obnoxious can you get?

In their search to find out, they then directly contradict themselves. 'Oh if you wrote the AI we can discuss it' when they said 'no AI art ever' just a few lines ago! And of course you simply have to provide indisputable proof that you're not guilty of producing AI art. I'm confident even Stalinist show trials didn't demand participants provide 'indisputable proof' that they hadn't betrayed the motherland. What are you supposed to do, film yourself sketching? What happens in 5 years when you can have AI produce a short video of you sketching?