Regarding AI-generated Imagery

Princess Celestia
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Due to the recent popularity of AI-generated imagery on the site (generators such as DALLe), we have decided to add machine learning generated to the filter lists of all of site’s default filters (except for the Everything filter, which continues to filter nothing).
The reasoning for this decision is that while machine-generated imagery can have quality in its appearance, our stance is that it lacks value as artistic production and thus will be filtered by default. You’re of course free to use the Everything filter or copy one of the site’s stock filters and remove the machine learning generated tag from it in case you desire to view such imagery.
We feel like artwork made by humans should be the forefront of the site. We may change our stance if the android revolution succeeds some time in the future. Until then, enjoy poni drawn by real people.
saby
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How will this affect human created art that uses one or more MLGI for a basis*? What is the correct way to tag those, shalll there be a tag other than “mixed media”? How much visual arts human effort is required for such creations to qualify as not being “merely” machine learning generated?
  • examples: anatomy and detail fixes; changing the proportions/build of a character; changing/adding clothing and accessories; completely overpainting (and not tracing) the character and/or major background elements
Princess Celestia
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@saby
I suppose in cases where edits are substantial enough (and not just small low-effort edits), it may simply be tagged in the same way we tag collabs, in this case something akin to artist:dalle, artist:human, with machine learning generated tag removed.
We will draft a better policy on this in the future. Right now these cases will need to be judged on a case-by-case basis, until a solid policy is formed.
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@saby
I’d assume two tags, the filtered one for fully generated (prompt-made with no or minimal editing), and one non-filtered for assisted-by (ie. drawing a pony over an AI generated landscape instead of a screencapped landscape from the show).
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Ocs,Boops,Tickles&Memes
So AI art/voices (like 15.AI) are still allowed on the site, just hidden by default?
Im ok wiht that, thought like the other have mentioned, how should it be tagged if it’s a ix of human made and AI art?
(i’ve seen a few people redraw AI generated art and have the AI pic in it as a reference, so i wonder how that should count)
Background Pony #EB90
Before doing this, separate the tags for AI generated imagery and voices. There are a lot of animations which uses AI generated voices, imho those should not be hidden by default.
Background Pony #38F5
I’d like to point out my thread in the tagging forum: Thread about tags for various “AI” image generators to discuss how to go about tagging things.

Voices
@icicle wicicle 1517, @Background Pony #EB90, @Parallel Black
There are the tags aivo and avo somebody made which I think are meant to identify computer-generated voice mimics - my guess is they mean “AI VOice” or “AI VoiceOver” - but so far nobody has commented to confirm, nor have they been merged or set up as implications of anything.
Redraws, mixed media
@saby, @Princess Celestia, @The Smiling Pony, @icicle wicicle 1517
In the case of complete redraws based on something generated, something like “machine learning reference” to follow the phrasing of screencap reference, perhaps?
Another situation that I haven’t seen arise yet, but which I’ve thought about, is machine learning generated backgrounds for drawings. If it comes up, perhaps “machine learning background” to go along with real life background?
Attribution and filtering
@Princess Celestia
I do not think the names of the image generator software should have artist: prefixes. They are tools - we don’t craft tags like artist:source filmmaker.
Even so, it wouldn’t be as simple as making a complex filter for machine learning generated, artist:* because the person who is responsible for the generation of the image may well be tagged with an artist: tag - AFAIK that’s the convention even for other “non-artistic-meritous” images like con photos and exact-replica screenshot vector traces*.
* please do not interpret this as an insult! I am aware that vectoring is a skillful craft
Merit
@Princess Celestia, @saby, @Princess Celestia, @Parallel Black
Even unedited machine learning generated imagery can have artistic merit, in any of several ways - through repeated refinement of your text input and settings until you get a result you want (I would compare this to photography, where there is a mix of hands-on influence and selection/curation by a skillful eye), or by using “img2img” functionality where a preliminary crude drawing is input to set up the composition and scene elements.
Value comes from what you put into it. It’s just that it’s new and there are a lot of “near zero effort” posts (eg. screenshots of the Craiyon website)
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I filtered out the tag a few days ago and was waiting to see how Derpi would handle this, so it’s reassuring to know that staff supports real artists. I’ve seen folks get tricked and share that art from Derpi to Discord without knowing. While I have to imagine more folks use Everything or custom filters, it’s a positive step that will put a bit of a damper on the proliferation of AI art.
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友情は魔法だ
Value comes from what you put into it
Do such works represent unique copyrightable works? In that case, who owns the copyright? The maker of the tool, or the one using it?
Serious question. I assume they do not, but I don’t know what jurisprudence, if any, exists. But I do know in the realm of music, especially where YouTube and sampled wounds are concerned, the maker of the tool seems to end up being the owner of what the tool makes - even though no one would ever contend that the maker of Yo-Yo Ma’s cello is the copyright holder of Yo-Yo Ma’s performances.
Background Pony #38F5
@Ciaran
IANAL. Also, do not confuse copyright for value - one is a matter of law, and the other is a matter of subjective human experience.
What I’ve seen floating around is that in the U.S., “ai”-generated imagery is not copyrightable, but if a textual prompt is used, that text may be. I have not seen discussions about edits or derivative works.
Bigcheese
Non-Fungible Trixie -

In summary, even models like Stable Diffusion can generate copyrightable works owned by the person that used the tool if the creation of the work meets the Threshold of originality.
The question is who owns the copyright, nobody, or the user of the tool. Nobody is even currently considering the training set authors as potential copyright owners.
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Title
https://youtu.be/sFBfrZ-N3G4?t=147
Could we maybe get an “ai-director:” tag or something like that?
I do not think somebody that engineers a prompt should be labelled as an artist, but I do think there’s a different sort of skill that goes into interacting with the models and accurately describing what you want them to do and how, along with the fact that different people will preference different results.
e.g: ai-artist:stable-diffusion, ai-director: cookiegalaxy and add artist: ponyartist123 if a reference image is used
ps:
This main video below is amazing in my opinion. It’s 13 minutes and worth a watch even if you are already familiar with the basics of the field.
https://youtu.be/SVcsDDABEkM
“I’ve been up till like, 2 or 3 in the morning just.. you know, really trying to change things and piece things together”
That quote pretty well describes why I think ai-director needs to be a thing. These prompt writers are spending hours testing hundreds of combinations with the AI’s to find the results to match their preferences best. At least right now there’s demand for people who are able to effectively direct the AI to produce the type of images the viewer wants. They’re no artists but they still put a lot of time and effort into making many of the images they post.
PUBLIQclopAccountant
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IRL 🎠 stallion
It looks like everyone else has raised the obvious points:
  • Separate out vocal synthesis from art generation for the default filter. Pretty much all 15.ai-tagged images have human animation of human art and are obviously not meant to be hidden by the intent of this policy, which seems to be to keep the bog-standard CrAIyon and ThisPonyDoesNotExist images off the homepage.
  • How to handle hybrid works? Human traced or redraw from the AI? A video where the only human elements are the script writing and the video editing (a.k.a. it’s animated AI art with 15.ai voices)? Collages [what percent of the input images must be human-drawn to count]?
  • I hope the eventual ruling is that ML-generated works are uncopyrightable. Force them into the public domain.
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@CookieGalaxy
I really disagree with that image. The “ai-director” tag I want is so I can filter out AI generations that have not been well curated or prompted by the prompter. I don’t view clicking a generate button as worthy of praise, I just want the worst of the prompters to be easy to filter out.
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Title
by all that I guess I mean, the prompter should be credited under the image, but I don’t think they should be credited under the name “artist” since they don’t view themselves as artists when they use the model.
Background Pony #38F5
How about implementing one of those black-bar text thumbnail overlays for machine learning generated?
(TBF I also think one should be implemented for edit)
@CookieGalaxy
Um, how would that help? Such a tag would properly be used on both low effort and high effort submissions without distinction. Besides, there’s no way to filter out “worst” human-made submissions on the site for any medium, unless you trust up/downvotes.
[edit] It was later clarified that they were suggesting a new prefix/category as a substitute for artist:, not just a single tag.
PUBLIQclopAccountant
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@PUBLIQclopAccountant @Background Pony #38F5
Perhaps have separate ML generated and AI assist tags?
  • ML generated would be hidden by default and be for images where the maximal human involvement is typing prompts, curating the results, and assembling them into a grid
  • AI assisted would describe images where both computers and humans had significant influence in the creative output. Traces and improvements of pure ML-generated images, most 15.ai assists, and hybrids of AI and human art belong in this bucket. Give it the black banner or perhaps a spoiler in the default filter, but no need to hide them.
  • There would also be images with AI/ML “artist” tags but without either of the above tags. Think of collages where the generated image(s) are a minor part of the whole.
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@Background Pony #38F5
It’s the same as the artist: tag. Artists that don’t match your preference can be added to filters and Artists that match preference very well can be watched.
The natural argument is why don’t we just use the artist: tag instead of ai-director:, but I think people using the AI’s don’t normally consider themselves artists, so they don’t want to add the tag.
You can see it when scrolling through machine learning generated. About 50% of them are tagged artist, and 50% of them are not tagged at all, presumably because those people don’t consider themselves artists.
Maybe prompt writers will start being called artists in the future and this is all a mute-point, but right now I think having a ai-director tag would be a nice way to credit people who can use the model and curate it’s outputs well, and helps users of the site filter in/out specific types of outputs, similar to how people already filter in/out certain artists.
The AI can emulate the style of an artist or make an original style but the prompter is still responsible for the content of the image, so it would be useful to be able to filter by the prompter too.
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