I draw the things my patreon supporters ask, exactly as they ask :). I uploaded the NSFW follow-up to my patreon. Check my commission rates and support my patreon for mature content.
Comment
Did a “Deedlit vs Pirotess” porn vote in social media and Deedlit won
Through the years navigating this whole AI art discussion i’ve often found myself unable to support opinions i’m moderate or even supportive about because the people making those arguments are; simply put; retarded. At one point you come to realize that the topic of AI art and the topic of AI bros and AI haters are completely different beasts that should be taken separately, and they’re often not, rather mixing them into something that turns the discussion difficult to navigate.
When it comes to AI art i find myself in kind of a middle ground. I’m an artist who lives of making drawings, so obviously i’m not happy about an app taking my income away, and i’m not fond of people calling themselves artists for just writing a prompt and let the machine do everything. However i don’t think that every AI use is some kind of evil, some uses are valid and inoffensive, like making memes and funny pictures and so and so, and i think AI can have validity for an artist if it’s used to get ideas or references to then do the drawing themselves. I wrote a lengthy article about my opinions years ago here, and years later i did a video revising a couple of things, in case that you wanna go that rabbit hole. Tho to summarize i could say my issues with AI stem from the cases in which people use AI when they should hire an artist, like commercial jobs, crowdfunding projects, videogames, and anything in general that would require actual skill and knowledge for which you should pay someone. And i also dislike many bad arguments that come from the AI bro crowd. But i also don’t care that you used it to do some funny dumb stuff, and that’s were i also get into conflict with the other side on the AI haters.
This is of course speaking only about AI in art. If we are speaking about AI in general then i think there’s a few sectors in which it is beneficial, and for everything else it’s the worse thing that has happened in centuries, it’s turning humanity into Idiocracy at an insane speed, it’s turning into the definitive propaganda tool that nobody seems to be questioning; not even AI critics for some reason; and has turned Dead internet theory into a reality, among many other things. It’s funny because despite being an artist, art is probably the thing i’m more moderate about AI. But that’s a topic for another time.
So, the point of this article is that i’ve kinda gotten pretty tired of the dumb stuff in both sides and realized that really AI art, as a topic on itself, doesn’t really bother me that much. I have my issues but i can navigate them doing original stuff that AI could never replicate and people want to see. It doesn’t piss me off to see people playing around with AI for fun. I’ll survive. But all of the dumb shit both sides say and do. Boy does that piss me off. So i’m gonna shit on you both, and i don’t care if nobody reads this, i’m gonna vent.
I’m gonna start with AI bros, but don’t you think you’re safe on the other side; oh no, i’m coming for you after this, just you wait.
Ai bros started the whole AI debate doing a speedrun for being the most insufferable people on the internet. I know they excuse themselves saying it’s because they’re reacting to artists being dumb on the AI topic, and that may be true in some cases after years of this debate, but i asure you that’s not how this started. AI bros went SO fast to chase artists to try and laugh at us and tell us how we are obsolete and un-necessary that no artist had time to even half open their mouths to express rejection to AI before they were swarming every artist’s feed. Ai haters sometimes over-react and have pretty bad tactics; of which i’ll speak later; but many of their bullshit comes from previous issues like virtue signalign. When it comes to the topic of AI itself nobody holds a candle in the hateful department as the AI bros. They’ll come out of nowhere, unprompted, and attack any artist they find; even when the artists is agreeing with them (yes, i asure you, it happens to me) in what seems at all lights an attempt to create as much hate for AI as humanly possible.
It’s not just a matter of bad arguments; and i’ll deal with those too; it’s a matter of their contemptible attitude. Every word they say exude hate for artists. It becomes very evident after a couple interactions that they aren’t defending AI out of any real interest for the technology, but simply a mindless hate for artists and an interest to see artists disappear. Sometimes in this intent they even make arguments that make them look pretty bad just so they can own the artists. Like when some right wingers want AI to triumph because they claim that “all artists are left wing”, which kinda means they’re unwittingly agreeing with the left wing arguments that the right wing is incapable of creating and has no artists. Something i don’t agree with by the way, but that IS what that right wing argument implies. Is in this attitude where you can see the resentment due to jealousy because some people work in what they like instead of having a shitty job. They’ve come to see what artists do as something unfair. As people who have been born automatically able to do great drawings and they’re hoarding that capacity and gatekeeping anyone else from expressing their ideas. This is not my theory, this is literally what they say, in their own words, anytime this discussion pops up. You read things like “you’re gatekeeping art”, “AI has democratized art” and “AI allows the making of art for people with no natural talent” a million times. And it comes from a very fundamental error in concept that i’ll explain:
Ai bros think that Art is something that requires no special knowledge whatsoever, and the people who do art is just people who have been born with a magical hand that instantly draws everything perfectly, (or who have millions of dollars and resources to do a movie or whatever). If they just had been born with the magical hand or had millions they could totally do Top drawings and movies because they have such GREAT IDEAS, and so they’re “gatekept” of doing art simply because they don’t have the magical hand that allows them to instantly draw like Yusuke Murata.
So they think that because the AI acts as that magical hand that draws quality pictures, that means that now they’re artists because they only have to prompt the ai their GREAT IDEAS and nothing else will be required. Nothing makes the artist an artist beyond having that magical hand that draws pretty pictures.
Reality is that those artists you see have spent countless hours to get to that level, and that level is not just the manual capacity to do a pretty picture, it’s a ton of technical knowledge on how to actually DO things correctly. Composition, lighting, directions, movement, paneling, character design, color theory, line weight, weight balance, perspective, rule of thirds, reading directions, expressions, storytelling, character development, vanishing points, toning, figure exaggeration, perspective, foreshortening, stylization, time expression, comedic timing, kinetic lines, use of icons, onomatopeyas, and a billion particulars on how to handle different types of drawings, stories, situations, characters, etc. Those manga comics that you like, you don’t like just because the pictures are pretty, you like because the author knew how to create a story and characters, portray them in attractive designs, panels and composition, and develop them over time.
There’s just so much knowledge that you learn through practice and experience and is completely ignored by AI bros as it didn’t matter at all because the AI doing the image pretty is enough. So that’s why most of what comes from these people ends up being slop, because they disregard and laugh at anything you would actually need to do art, and artists obviously get frustrated at people trying to brag that artists are not needed anymore while they produce slop and they don’t even understand what is wrong with what they produce.
And that’s how you have people like Shadiversity who bragged about their “artistic knowledge” when doing AI drawings, only to then create a drawing in which the sun was behind the character but the light came from the front of the character, the head was huge and a ton of other problems that he could never discern because he had tried to bypass the process of learning. That’s why most AI “creators” on the internet only pass comics that real artists have made or memes through the AI as if it was their own but the result is something that has not a 10th of the impact or humor of the original. You never understand the concept of AI “stripping the soul” of something until you see a funny meme passed through the AI. And yet these people never realize that there’s something wrong with the product. They substituted the simple cartoon drawing the artist made for some hyperrealistic baroque anime image; or Ghibli style; and because it looks pretty then that means it’s better, isn’t it? But the result has 0 expressiveness or humor.
Even in something like book writing i can spot this. I’m not a book writer but i studied storytelling in my career, and obviously as a comic artist i’ve done my many share of storytelling. And whenever i talk with an AI bro who does books i can tell how they don’t know the basics of storytelling. Not only they don’t know but they even disregard proper storytelling conventions if you point them out, because they know better, they’re the IDEA GUY, they only needed the magical hand to be able to create masterpieces.
And that’s why it’s so frustrating to argue with AI bros, because they’re arguing about something they don’t understand, but they don’t even understand that they don’t understand, so they act high and mighty and brag about how they’re going to beat you because their stuff is so much better than yours, meanwhile their stuff is rarely more than the usual hyperrealistic baroque anime drawing AI tends to produce. It’s true that many artists completely underestimate what AI can do and say stupid shit about that, and sometimes jump the gun when talking with someone who uses AI, but i cannot help but to understand their frustration when we are bombarded all the time by people telling us we are extinct and un-needed because they have the magical AI hand and nothing else is needed to create art!
Then there’s that concept of artists being “naturally talented”. Reality is nobody just simply draws great when they start. There are people with talent but that talent makes them way faster at learning something they still have to learn, and most artists don’t have talent; we just practice like mad, and study all of the theory. I can tell you that i have no natural talent whatsoever for drawing; i would actually even say the opposite, i’m kind of naturally handicapped for drawing. Everything i know to do is because i’ve spent a lot of years drawing every single day and learning theory and techniques and knowledge, and now i have a lot of technical knowledge that my hand is not able to keep up with :p.
Nobody is gatekeeping you from picking up a pencil and learn, and if you actually learned the theory you would understand that you don’t really need an AI level of drawing to create. Knowing how to create compelling characters and story, portrayed with a good composition, tempo, development, paneling, etc, is more important than the drawing looking like the Mona Lisa. There are people doing ultra successful comics that are just sticks. The majority of my most popular works are shit i spawned in half an hour for the lols, but because i have the knowledge i can make comics and characters that people love despite being drawn like ass. Then my best drawings that i’ve spent days doing get 2 likes and nobody remembers them. Yes i’m salty. Almost 20 Wholesome series comics and you still ask for more you bitches.
The “I have GREAT IDEAS i just can’t do them ’cause i have no natural talent” from AI bros is born precisely of having no knowledge at all, which is what would tell them that their ideas are actually probably quite shitty, because anytime i talk with an AIbro they end up unwittingly revealing they really don’t know much about doing things.
This isn’t even anything new, most artists have had an initial phase like that in which they though they knew everything and they designed edgy cringy OCs with a dozen belts that they hated once they got older and more knowledgeable, or had to deal with some “writer” who did stuff of the short and asked them to collaborate. Artists then keep learning until they know how to do stuff correctly and stop that bullshit. AIbros instead seem to be in that perpetual state of superiority in something they really don’t know much about and you can’t have a conversation with them because; as i said; how you converse with someone who doesn’t understand that they don’t understand?
There’s honestly a lot of shitty arguments AI bros make, like when they accuse me of “wanting to make money with my art” as if it’s some kind of gotcha (?), because they think it’s somehow an hypocrisy to earn money from something you like to do. Or the “just learn to prompt and use the AI yourself instead of drawing!”, a comment that really can only be made by someone who isn’t an artist and is only interested in the result. The artist is an artist because we like to do art. We like to draw, or make movies, or music, etc. Pushing a button and getting something done without the process is precisely what someone un-interested in art would do, which is again another reason why we get frustrated with AI bros as yet another show that they’re really not interested in art at all. Also with the AI we would not be able to do all of those things that i previously mentioned that we know to do. Writing prompts does not allow for that level of control. It’s again something that only a non-artist would say because they don’t know all of the things the artist know how to do manually. Also i’m going to bet if somebody pays me is because they want ME to do the drawing. The AI they can use themselves they wouldn’t need to pay me to write the prompt.
There’s also a big section of the AI bros who are just traditional puritan right wingers who hate artists in general because they see what we do as degeneracy, especially if it’s anime, so they want us to cease to exist thanks to AI, and also right wingers who are trying to turn the debate into a partisan issue, presenting AI as right wing and anti AI as left wing. This is one of the things that is doompiling me the most about the topic because the moment something catches traction as a partisan issue there’s no way back. If it catches on that being pro AI is a right wing thing, in a matter of time we’ll have the entirety of the right wing supporting AI for absolutely everything just because it’s what they’re supposed to do as right wingers. If that happens AI will be unstoppable as they’ll vote to have AI educate our kids just to own the libs. And the left will want even the rational uses of AI like medicine erased just because it’s the left wing to do.
But if i keep with the AI bros i’m gonna be here forever, let’s give some love to the other side
Artists in general are nowhere near the level of retarded on the Ai topic as AI bros, but there are big sections that completely over-react to anything AI. They see any use of AI no matter what it is as an immoral evil that cannot even be redeemed, so they chase and harass anyone who even does a meme with it, to very ridiculous levels. This is a completely stupid thing to do as you’re only alienating people and turning them against artists. We have just had a decade exemplifying what happens when you create a purity spiral and pester people with it non-stop. You don’t become the soul of the party, and the pendulum effect is gonna fuck you up. And me as well in the process.
This alienation gets even worse when you start doing shit like denying people service for disagreeing with their personal politics that affect nothing on your work. It would be a thing if you reject to draw something political or uncomfortable that goes against your principles; that’s understandable, as the difference of opinion is the topic itself of the drawing. But to go around looking for the politics of your potential clients to reject them because they think different than you on abortion or immigration is fucking insane. And you often make sport of it giving them a bad answer and then posting it online for virtue signal. Mentally unstable behavior.
Even if i agreed with you on these topics, it’s such a tactically unsound thing to do. A machine pops up that threatens to take away your source of income. Maybe it has already taken away a part of it, as it has done for me (because yes i can testify i know it has made me lose clients). You should be wary of this and try to adapt and compensate so you can keep making money. And instead what you choose to do is kick away another big chunk of your possible clients? are you dumb? Or have you been so deep into an echo chamber that treats virtue signal as currency that you do not realize that virtue signal does not pay the bills? Have you become the mythical artist who indeed works for *Exposure*? Maybe you’re the kind so balls deep into moral superiority that you don’t mind getting your career fucked over if in exchange you earn internet points. But you’re dragging me with you, so shut the fuck up. Or maybe you’re one of those so naive that you think there are so SOOOO many clients lining up for you that it doesn’t matter if you actively alienate them? one of those who think that AI is no threat at all so why would you try to be nice?
And that takes me to another anti-ai stupidity (although honestly and weirdly some AI bros do this too), as is brutally underestimating AI. Yes, AI bros don’t know about art, and they don’t know all of the things that are wrong with their drawings. But neither do regular people. And for most people “looks pretty” is enough. And it does look pretty.
There’s this widespread idea even among AI bros that “you can always tell it’s AI”, and “AI always looks bad” and it simply not true. There are a couple styles that people kind of know as “AI styles”, and that’s why people believe they can tell. But reality is AI can be trained with whatever style. Those typical styles are just styles AI’s have trained a lot with because they’re common drawing styles. But you can feed AI drawings of other styles, and some people do. Those drawings are wayyy harder to tell, especially without artistic knowledge, and they DO look good even if they fail at things that a real artist probably wouldn’t.
This is a drawing made by AI in regular anime style, and if somebody told you it’s some official image you would probably not question it. Ai does this style particularly well. Of course most of the images it does have dumb compositions and defects that would be tells for an artist, but the prompter can do infinite images and save those that look so good it would be hard for anyone to tell, and even so, it looks good enough so what does it matter for the average person if it has some defect when you look closer?
This is a drawing made by an AI fed images of artist Ratatatat. Again if you’re an artist and you look closer you may notice things the artist wouldn’t make. But if you’re not suspicious you wouldn’t think twice, and the average person surely isn’t going to. This could perfectly pass up as Ratatata’s work.
This is also an AI drawing that has been fed drawings of Japanese artist Koruse. Again if you’re an artist you may look at some details and realize, but if you aren’t an artist you wouldn’t notice it’s AI
Oh. You’re thinking “I totally noticed it is AI”?. Sorry, i lied, this is an original Koruse drawing. It just have a few weird details like the hands because that’s what happens with real artists, and that why AI commits some mistakes like that too because it copies those real artists. I like to use this image to trick people and it ALWAYS works with the people who think you can always tell. No, AI is at a point where the drawings themselves; even if they lack the theoretical knowledge an artist has; look good, and many times look indistinguishable from a real drawing. And even when AI was starting it was kinda bad you could tell the technology would advance. Pretending that “you can always tell” and “it looks bad” and “it’ll always look bad” is pure cope. It has always been cope. And if you don’t drop that from your cloud and face reality you’re gonna have a rude awakening. You’re not competing only with the stupid Ghibli style that half of Facebook pages use for dumb memes with six finger characters. You’re competing with something that produces 10.000 Ratatata drawings a day. The people using it may not know how to do things right, but if a person can just spawn 100 images with a prompt in a few seconds, at one point some of them are gonna look good enough for what they want, and they’re not gonna need to hire you. Sure if they try to use that in some project like a game it’s likely gonna look like an incoherent mess, but they still didn’t pay you, so fat solace you have in that.
So you should stop dreaming an antagonizing people and start focusing on what AI cannot help people with. Character design for all those edgy OCs people have that have too many specific details for the AI to do right. Comics, stories, expressive characters, unique styles, make your own characters popular, etc. And don’t be a dick. Be professional in work even if the person disgusts you (oh i have been there). Do the job as stated, be communicative, respect delivery dates, be polite when related to work, and then vent to your irl friends that you had to do a drawing to some idiot.
Everytime you do some bullshit like attacking people for memes or rejecting them because they sent you a reference made with AI you just give ammunition to the AI bros and make things worse. For fuck sake if somebody sent you an AI reference it means they know how to use Ai and they STILL chose to pay YOU for drawings. And your best idea was to shit on them. Lol. Lmao even.
Eat a dick, don’t make my life more difficult.
Now i’m not saying there aren’t things you can’t complain about. As i said at the very beginning, cases where an artist would need to be hired shouldn’t use AI, and that’s where you should use your voices. I don’t buy games that use AI for the art, i don’t support crowdfundings that use AI, and i call them out on it. But you have to pick your battles. Calling out Activision and not buying their game is not the same as summoning your tribe and dogpilling a random dude who made a Ghibli AI meme for fun, get a grip and get down that purity spiral bullshit. I don’t want people to relate me with you.
So yeah there’s more that could be said but i’ve vented enough. Foul language aside i think my position is rational and could probably be summarized as “don’t be a fucking dick”, so if you read this and you get angry on any of the two extremes then idk stop being a fucking dick.
Spain wins the Soccer world cup and gets legal custody of Hatsune Miku. Now she has a few words for Argentina and her playstyle. As always, there’s an NSFW follow-up in my patreon, and video with the process. Check my commission rates and support my patreon for mature content.
Time for the yearly summer drawing, so this time we give some love to the villains of “Monster girls on tour”. I uploaded an NSFW follow-up to my patreon, and video with the process. Check my commission rates and support my patreon for mature content.
