Art is dead? Long live AI

Beth
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Tree of Harmony - Drew someone's OC for the 2022 Community Collab
Verified Pegasus - Show us your gorgeous wings!
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
Philomena - For helping others attend the 2021 community collab
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
A Tale For The Ages - Celebrated MLP's 35th Anniversary and FiM's 8th Anniversary

In digital purgatory
@Clear Vision
“Why go out of your way to collect AI art?”
It’s limited, but it sometimes spits out something that looks fascinating.
Even though it does a lot of stupid stuff, it sometimes does something very well, it goes in my inspiration folders. I’m not going to risk feeding AI back into AI at this point, it’s not good enough yet.
So while I consider the pictures to be FUBAR on arival with corruption baked into it at this point, some of it looks pretty damn cool.
Like now if I am thinking about stuff to draw, I could mash together ideas, have the AI spit a bunch of crap out, and sift through it and collect anything good for inspiration. While keeping all the AI art I save separate from anything to be fed into AI, as it’s precorrupted, and might reinforce bad behavior in the next AI.
Right now I’m just collecting anything good people spit out. I’ve also been practicing touching up and editing other peoples styles, i just don’t post it, because i don’t bother asking for permission.
If I can find the art in a common space, I will use it for inspiration. Now collecting art for feeding into AI is something i’m not interested in, not interested in the legal aspect of it, too busy to go through all that. I’m not the one feeding and tuning the robots atm though, let some nerds that can’t draw do that for now, until it becomes more accessible to traditional artist.
I don’t want to use AI for my own generation as an online artist, because i don’t want other artist claiming they made part of my work.
Posted Report
d1ckbitch
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Hard Work - Merited Perfect Pony Plot Provider badge with only their own art
Perfect Pony Plot Provider - Uploader of 10+ images with 350 upvotes or more (Questionable/Explicit)
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday
Artist -

Doughnuts Worshipper
About the AI art policy, was it left on hiatus since Cocaine was the only vocal user about it?
Anyway, in the last 24 hours, we still only had, like, 25 MLG pictures, it’s like one out of twenty. I’m starting to wonder if Deviantart reached its level of destruction because the AI generator was actually a feature of the website, not something you had to install and learn to use properly. Shouldn’t we wait for AI to actually be a problem to implement the outright ban?
Looks like today’s 25 pictures were the work of a few people eager to share their ideas but crippled by no art skills, and some are interesting to look at, would it be right to silence them because AI is annoying
Beth
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Tree of Harmony - Drew someone's OC for the 2022 Community Collab
Verified Pegasus - Show us your gorgeous wings!
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
Philomena - For helping others attend the 2021 community collab
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
A Tale For The Ages - Celebrated MLP's 35th Anniversary and FiM's 8th Anniversary

In digital purgatory
@d1ckbitch
If saturation is the issue, you just find the machine learning tag and hit minus on it to hide the tag.
I reckon if AI starts saturating more than fiddy percent, AI art will be hidden by default. If it isn’t already.
If it takes over, but you still want to see AI art sometimes, you pretty much make two filters.
If AI takes up a big part of the site, they might as well just make a tick box to hide and unhide it regardless of filters.
Posted Report
PUBLIQclopAccountant
Magnificent Metadata Maniac - #1 Assistant
Solar Guardian - Refused to surrender in the face of the Lunar rebellion and showed utmost loyalty to the Solar Empire (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice

IRL 🎠 stallion
@Beth
Unless we have a sudden surge in uploads of AI art, has the upload rate noticeably increased? There are fewer than 5400 ML-generated images as of right now. I don’t think we are currently at a moment where there is a danger of being swamped by AI images taking up storage space that no one actually sees.
Posted Report
d1ckbitch
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Hard Work - Merited Perfect Pony Plot Provider badge with only their own art
Perfect Pony Plot Provider - Uploader of 10+ images with 350 upvotes or more (Questionable/Explicit)
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday
Artist -

Doughnuts Worshipper
@dash669
Separate sites for AI would mean separate sites for, say, YCHs. There’s even 16000 of them, and their whole purpose is being half-finished, flat-colored sketches
Posted Report
Beth
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Tree of Harmony - Drew someone's OC for the 2022 Community Collab
Verified Pegasus - Show us your gorgeous wings!
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
Philomena - For helping others attend the 2021 community collab
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
A Tale For The Ages - Celebrated MLP's 35th Anniversary and FiM's 8th Anniversary

In digital purgatory
@PUBLIQclopAccountant
Is this site on the way back machine? Might be possible to make a line graph and see.
@dash669
Creativity is art. AI is art by any metric i consider it.
I already have loads of pictures i rip on way before AI. Like I’ll take half a pose from one drawing, some aesthetic from another, some ideas from another. If I heavily rip a pose, I would change the proportion, or angle, character or species, just so people can’t claim I did it by tracing.*
AI is just pretty good at this. It’s bad at other things. Actual artist would have a huge advantage over the AI generated outputs, if they can paint over, render specific things for their traditional digital art.
Actually in order to get anything good out of AI is a shitload of work. Lots of work goes into curating the feeds, then you have to sit there and learn how your specific feed is going to work with the prompts, then it might get everything wrong but one vital f’up where you still need a traditional digital artist anyway.
You have to keep modifying the pool of input data, and lots of images can just randomly tank the kind of AI your building, so you have to go back and remove that image from the pool.
Then you have to make sure every image you’re using you’re allowed to use. Or atleast make your pool big enough that it doesn’t overfit and steal peoples characters or trademarks.
*Actually for pro artist, tracing isn’t even a hard boundary, I wouldn’t say many care, this is more of a child on deviant art kind of mindset, because the art is so much more than a couple lines when you’re a real artist.
Clear Vision
An Artist Who Rocks - 100+ images under their artist tag
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Hard Work - Merited Perfect Pony Plot Provider badge with only their own art
Perfect Pony Plot Provider - Uploader of 10+ images with 350 upvotes or more (Questionable/Explicit)
The Power of Love - Given to a publicly verified artist with an image under their artist’s tag that has reached 1000 upvotes
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Charitable Contributor - Contributed to a series of art packs that helped raise over $10,000 for charity
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Artist -

Petrolhead Artist
@Beth
That makes sense if you’re just collecting decent examples of it. There has been a small number of AI images (big emphasis on small) I’ve seen that have actually looked alright to me even though I could still tell it’s AI.
Creativity is art. AI is art by any metric i consider it.
I’d like to point out that depending on where you look, the definition of art specifically mentions human creativity and imagination:
Of course, this is just the first definition that pops up on Google and there are many ways to define art as it is quite broad and it can mean different things to people. All definitions mention creativity and/or expression in some regard, and I believe that humans are an important part of that process.
Even though all digital art is made on a computer, it is still the artist’s creativity and imagination. The computer didn’t do it for them, they had to make things how they wanted it. A human made their idea a reality through digital means.
With AI art, even though the initial prompt is your idea, the computer is what made it a reality. The main issue I have is when people try to pass off AI art as entirely their own work and don’t disclose it.
Shouldn’t we wait for AI to actually be a problem to implement the outright ban?
If you wait for it to become an actual problem, it will spiral out of control. Even if there isn’t an outright ban, I think there should be better separation.
Posted Report
Beth
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Tree of Harmony - Drew someone's OC for the 2022 Community Collab
Verified Pegasus - Show us your gorgeous wings!
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
Philomena - For helping others attend the 2021 community collab
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
A Tale For The Ages - Celebrated MLP's 35th Anniversary and FiM's 8th Anniversary

In digital purgatory
@Clear Vision
Me and you clearly disagree on what a skill is.
The AI is not easy to create. It’s easy to use as a novelty maybe, but such usage is not profitable. If you can get the art simply by typing a prompt into someone elses AI with no coding, or art background, or ability to curate images or train AI, then the generated art has no value, or the measly value of what you payed to use the AI, except depreciated.
Even typing a prompt takes both skill and imagination. That definition is basically saying art is any expression or application willed into existence by a human.
This is always how it works. The value of any art depends on how hard it is to make. I can make AI spit out worthless crap all day, i might randomly get something that has value, only for someone else to make the same thing.
Some people think the 3d modeling is an easier way to make art than drawing by hand. It’s not, not usually. I understand after a lot of work you can output many, many more images than 2d art, but it takes dedication to get there, or everyone would be 3d modeling.
Posted Report
ArDee
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Artist -
Wallet After Summer Sale -

Vapor Trail is best pony
The AI is not easy to create. It’s easy to use as a novelty maybe, but such usage is not profitable. If you can get the art simply by typing a prompt into someone elses AI with no coding, or art background, or ability to curate images or train AI, then the generated art has no value, or the measly value of what you payed to use the AI, except depreciated.
I feel like this point is moot when any “prompt engineers” other than the ones involved in testing the AI have nothing to do with the coding process. They don’t have a stake in how difficult it was, they’re just customers.
You’re right that Joe Everyman being able to type in a prompt and get art out of it devalues art by a lot, but at the end of the day the layman is going to care even less about the “value” of art if they can get an AI to make it for them, even if it has imperfections or quirks that aren’t obvious without detailed inspection and/or an art background, and that’s bad for the art scene as a whole no matter how you slice it.
Likely the only people who care enough to actually raise concerns about this are artists, and unfortunately, the majority of people don’t take art seriously because it’s not “”“real””” like STEM is, so those protests will continue to be unheard in the name of “scientific progress.”
Even typing a prompt takes both skill and imagination. That definition is basically saying art is any expression or application willed into existence by a human.
While this is following the letter of the definition, I don’t think it’s really following the spirit of it. The imagination required to conceptualize an idea is considerably disparate from the skill required to execute it. As a writer, I know this process all too well, as I’ve got plenty of ideas for stories jotted down but not necessarily the inspiration and/or skill to actually execute them how I’m imagining them. This is the same reason why many people commission artists, after all - they have the imagination to think of what they’d like to see, but not the skill to execute it themselves, so they find an artist whose style they like and pay them to work with them to bring their idea to life.
Some people think the 3d modeling is an easier way to make art than drawing by hand. It’s not, not usually. I understand after a lot of work you can output many, many more images than 2d art, but it takes dedication to get there, or everyone would be 3d modeling.
Mmh…kind of. The answer isn’t so cut and dry as that. It depends on whether you’re creating original characters or using pre-prepared models, because in the later case all you have to do is know how to import models, how to pose, and how to create point lights, all three of which are easy to figure out if you RTFM for Blender/SFM.
Anything more complex than that takes practice, sure, but probably less practice than accomplishing similar things in 2D given the rendering engine is still giving you real-time feedback about the end result of what you’re changing, and there’s more often than not documentation and tutorials available to discover exactly how to do a process if you don’t know it. Even creating basic OCs isn’t that hard - texture editing an existing model is comparatively really easy, and grafting two models together typically involves just locking the transform nodes together. Also if you’re someone like me that doesn’t have very steady hands, 3D is a lot more approachable than 2D.
Posted Report
Beth
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Tree of Harmony - Drew someone's OC for the 2022 Community Collab
Verified Pegasus - Show us your gorgeous wings!
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
Philomena - For helping others attend the 2021 community collab
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
A Tale For The Ages - Celebrated MLP's 35th Anniversary and FiM's 8th Anniversary

In digital purgatory
Art that is easy for anyone to create is worthless.
If it was really so easy, we’d be flooded.
A combination of words and negative words can only make one AI model produce so many things, and it will produce similar results for anyone with the same model. Severely depreciating shared AI models.
You’re severely limited with what your words can make if you don’t understand how these things are built and fed.
Basically the rules of the universe didn’t break down, we’re just going to be temporarily in a bubble where people think it’s effortless value, but value is going to be proportional to effort when the smoke styles.
Economic bubble, a wild west, or unexplored frontier is all it is, it’s not a god.
Posted Report
Clear Vision
An Artist Who Rocks - 100+ images under their artist tag
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Hard Work - Merited Perfect Pony Plot Provider badge with only their own art
Perfect Pony Plot Provider - Uploader of 10+ images with 350 upvotes or more (Questionable/Explicit)
The Power of Love - Given to a publicly verified artist with an image under their artist’s tag that has reached 1000 upvotes
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Charitable Contributor - Contributed to a series of art packs that helped raise over $10,000 for charity
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Artist -

Petrolhead Artist
The AI is not easy to create.
You’re absolutely correct. Coding is difficult, and as an artist I know virtually nothing about it. However, this is only applicable to the person/people that actually coded and created the AI. The average person who generates AI images is not doing so using a custom model that they made from scratch.
Even typing a prompt takes both skill and imagination. That definition is basically saying art is any expression or application willed into existence by a human.
Imagination, yes. Skill? It depends on what your definition of what being skilled at something is. If it’s simply describing something that you can do, yes. But in terms of describing someone as skilled, at least to me that only applies if they’re considerably above average at the task/activity in question.
If you put a computer in front of someone who’s never been involved with AI art before, told them the basics of how to generate AI art and showed them a few example prompts so they’re not going in completely blind, I can guarantee they’ll eventually generate something that will look “good” by the average Derpi user’s standards in a couple weeks at most if they at least have basic writing, critical thinking and computer skills.
However, take that same person and the same approach but with drawing (telling them the basics, showing a few good examples and ask them to get on with it), there’s a good chance that they won’t make anything even remotely close to being good in a month, maybe even a year. There’s a reason why artists spend years honing their craft, because that is what it takes to truly become skilled at any sort of difficult task, let alone exceptional where you make the hard task look easy. You should know that first hand with the number of art submissions under your tag.
This is always how it works. The value of any art depends on how hard it is to make. I can make AI spit out worthless crap all day, i might randomly get something that has value, only for someone else to make the same thing.
Incorrect. The value of art is either how much someone is willing to pay for it, or how much someone likes the execution of what they see. The method of how the artist got there isn’t a consideration for most people unless they are strictly against AI art or if they want to learn from an artist. Even putting AI aside, there are sketches which are better than fully fledged drawings. A really simple idea executed to perfection is better than a more complicated idea which took longer to do and has more detail, but also more flaws and oversights.
Being an artist is not only about being able to make things, but make things that look good. And how the finished product looks is all most people care about. AI can make images that are passable at a thumbnail size or on a phone, and that is enough for most people unless they have an appreciation for art that goes beyond face value.
Art that is easy for anyone to create is worthless.
If it was really so easy, we’d be flooded.
As far as I know, there’s still some quality control going on. What you see here on Derpi isn’t even close to all the AI art that’s out there. However, it’s unreasonable to ask Derpibooru staff to even attempt to deal with affairs that aren’t happening on their own site if it’s nothing to do with them. They can’t stop AI art being a thing, the only thing they can do is either police it or control how it is shared here. My suggestions and viewpoint on this thread surround things that are happening on this site, rather than as a whole.
Posted Report
Beth
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Tree of Harmony - Drew someone's OC for the 2022 Community Collab
Verified Pegasus - Show us your gorgeous wings!
Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
Philomena - For helping others attend the 2021 community collab
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
A Tale For The Ages - Celebrated MLP's 35th Anniversary and FiM's 8th Anniversary

In digital purgatory
@Clear Vision
Outside a bubble what people are willing to pay is based on supply and demand.
If there is a large supply of basic AI art, their will always be a demand of more professional, curated AI art, and AI art worked on manually.
These public AI models get juiced out, people grow ilcontent with the limitations. Real coders and artist now have to step forward to advance the market.
Sorry it’s a lot to read, I’ll reply better when I’m home, I just took a shot at one thing I read.
@PUBLIQclopAccountant
Oh yeah, the prompting is more like coding and gambling than anything resembling natural language. After you build the model you still got to spam it with all the technobabble, and basically learn how the particular model responds to all this stuff. Generating a deliberate image with AI still takes hours to days
PUBLIQclopAccountant
Magnificent Metadata Maniac - #1 Assistant
Solar Guardian - Refused to surrender in the face of the Lunar rebellion and showed utmost loyalty to the Solar Empire (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice

IRL 🎠 stallion
If you put a computer in front of someone who’s never been involved with AI art before, told them the basics of how to generate AI art and showed them a few example prompts so they’re not going in completely blind, I can guarantee they’ll eventually generate something that will look “good” by the average Derpi user’s standards in a couple weeks at most if they at least have basic writing, critical thinking, and computer skills.
Thankfully for the longevity of the artistic profession…
  1. Most people lack basic writing, critical thinking, and computer skills
  2. Unless specified otherwise, AI has a recognizable and aggressively normie house style. While it’s easy enough to add “…in the style of <artist>” to the prompt, I’m uncertain how discoverable that is (see point 1)
  3. This one is likely to change, but current models require spamming the prompt with irrelevant technobabble (4K, trending on art station, epic, etc…) or writing out the prompt as a Derpi tag cloud instead of describing the desired output in plain English.
Posted Report
Clear Vision
An Artist Who Rocks - 100+ images under their artist tag
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Hard Work - Merited Perfect Pony Plot Provider badge with only their own art
Perfect Pony Plot Provider - Uploader of 10+ images with 350 upvotes or more (Questionable/Explicit)
The Power of Love - Given to a publicly verified artist with an image under their artist’s tag that has reached 1000 upvotes
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Charitable Contributor - Contributed to a series of art packs that helped raise over $10,000 for charity
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Artist -

Petrolhead Artist
Outside a bubble what people are willing to pay is based on supply and demand.
It’s not a bubble, demand for a specific (human) artist’s commissions will always be based on how much people are willing to pay as there’s only one artist who only has so much time in their day and ultimately their lifetime… unless they find a way to clone themselves or train an AI to draw in their style that’s indistinguishable from their actual work.
As an artist, the only people that matter when you’re trying to sell commissions are those who are willing to pay the most. Everyone else is irrelevant.
All I’m trying to say here is that the value of art is hardly dictated by the amount of work put into it when you compare different artists.
If there is a large supply of basic AI art, their will always be a demand of more professional, curated AI art, and AI art worked on manually.
I do partially agree with you here. Supply will definitely play a role with AI art, however the fact that you think there will still be demand for more refined and professional AI art and AI art manually edited proves a previous point of mine:
The method of how the artist got there isn’t a consideration for most people unless they are strictly against AI art or if they want to learn from an artist.
People don’t typically care how an artist made something or who made it (unless it’s from a popular artist or someone they already know), they purely judge what they see at that moment and don’t care to investigate any further. Especially if they’re just scrolling through their Twitter timeline or their watched tags here.
Of course, anyone who’s looking to get a commission will certainly do more than surface level research, but I’m thinking about the bigger picture here with smaller artists yet to prove themselves or be discovered in any regard. You can’t commission an artist you’ve never heard of - how will small artists stand out when AI art starts to ramp up?
Real coders and artist now have to step forward to advance the market.
We’re not in this together. The people who coded Stable Diffusion and other AI models that used art and photos without permission have no regard for artists/photographers, and some even have the audacity to CHARGE you to use them - making a profit off other people’s work they had no rights to. AI art is glorified plagiarism unless the creators of a model can prove that every image in the dataset is either original content made by them, or content used with permission.
You’re not wrong, but I just wanted to demonstrate that making art is much harder to get a grasp of than generating AI art even if you are taught and shown the basics first.
Posted Report
PUBLIQclopAccountant
Magnificent Metadata Maniac - #1 Assistant
Solar Guardian - Refused to surrender in the face of the Lunar rebellion and showed utmost loyalty to the Solar Empire (April Fools 2023).
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice

IRL 🎠 stallion
You can’t commission an artist you’ve never heard of - how will small artists stand out when AI art starts to ramp up?
My advice would be to study what art styles are the house style of the AI and then do something different. This is more applicable to new new artists than to artists with experience (and therefore existing personal habits) trying to break into a new niche/fandom.
Posted Report
Rod Hungwell

did nothing wrong
I haven’t been here for awhile and almost everything that caught my eye today in the gallery was ai generated.
I’m not trying to crap on anybody’s work and it’s possible the artists I like have just stopped drawing stuff, but ai looks to be filling what seems to be a void in quality humanized stuff and I thought it was worth mentioning because that’s kinda the opposite of art “dying”.
Posted Report
Background Pony #C603
If painterly semi-3D is your style, AI is right up your alley. If you prefer show-accurate, I have yet to see much show-accurate art under the usual AI tags.
My preference is that people stop using these AI programs entirely. And that this site would help encourage that by forbidding people from posting anything made using them here.
Posted Report
Interested in advertising on Derpibooru? Click here for information!
Ponies Online! - April 13-14

Help fund the $15 daily operational cost of Derpibooru - support us financially!

Syntax quick reference: **bold** *italic* ||hide text|| `code` __underline__ ~~strike~~ ^sup^ %sub%

Detailed syntax guide