I figured this day would come. Honestly I thought it would be faster after Dalle 3 back in 2023. The world of image generation has been largely driven by enthusiasts on the internet rather than companies due to their rampant filter and copyright restrictions. Open Source was going to win eventually though, and here we are now.
We get a lot of AI art submissions in the submit box, and 90% of them are completely unlabeled. As of the last month or so, the solution has quickly shifted from catching typical AI errors, to me running around learning what LoRAs and models people are releasing while being wary of new artist styles and keeping an eye on existing artist galleries to cross reference submissions that look like theirs.
I'll be doing a longer editorial once OpenAI drops their new image generation later soon™, but I figured I'd get a general update out now. So have a mini writeup update thing! Continue below.
It's basically impossible to tell if something is AI or not if someone is a skilled prompter who can do minor edits at this point. Especially in simpler less shaded styles. Complex pieces like the Daybreaker up there have a few tells, but only if you zoom way in. At at glance like most people view art, or really the level of inspection on EQD in the last 14 years or so, it's not happening.
Even in the case of Celestia here. The errors are just so ridiculously minor. Actual artists make mistakes all the time. The lazy squiggles on her accessories are about it. Everything else is the typical JPG artifact level stuff I've seen forever or just messy coloring.
They aren't all perfect of course. You can still tell even with these NoobAI merges that seem to produce nearly flawless pony. But it is getting so ridiculously hard. Especially when they slap a LoRA on there to inject an artist style. Or edit a few minor details. No one bothered to edit Nightmare Moon here, so the eyes are an easy giveaway.
Someone with any art skill at all could easily fix the ai errors though. And if they submit it here I'd never be able to tell. Just to see how long it takes, I've grabbed a few myself and fixed them. In 5 minutes of blur tool, painting over artifacts, and redrawing a few lines, I could easily fool myself. The only reason I'd know it is AI is due to me being aware of whatever model or LoRA they used since a lot of prompters are too lazy to do anything other than what they deliver by default.
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| Longluna is Long - In this case that's the first thing I noticed, but drawing pony bodies longer is an artist thing too, so not a good tell at all. |
The big thing is, the people making this stuff are getting better. We can't rely on unskilled prompters not noticing mangled limbs and broken eyes these days. For every thousand people spamming CivitAI with terrible anatomy and horrifying abominations, there are 30 that actually have an eye for art and will sit and generate 150 times until they get something excellent then fix errors manually.
Of course, we still need to avoid witch hunts. I still see artists on Twitter vent their frustrations about people asking if their art is AI. Stop this.
With OpenAI announcing an updated image generator later this month for the first time since Dalle-3 a year and a half ago, it might get even crazier. Grok was a huge flop for images, and Google's Imagen 3 isn't great at pony. Dalle was a different beast. If Dalle-4 is as big a leap as 3 was to 2, we might see a massive tsunami of high quality pony fooling everyone.
And lets not forget PonyXL, the one that has basically fueled everything until NoobAI's furry merges started taking some pony market share away. The juggernaut of Civit is releasing its 7th version in the near future. If Dalle 4 is a filtered flop, expect to see this one go on a rampage instead.
Anyway, this got longer than I planned. I really just wanted to display some examples after that Rainbowshine fooled everyone I showed it to earlier. On the EQD front, I'll do my best to keep Drawfriend posts drawn art only, but I'm not naive enough to think I'll be able to police this technology for much longer. Luckily I enjoy playing AI detective, so browsing through the horrors of Civit to see what new styles people are inevitably going to submit is not a problem for me. (In other news, they really need a pony tag so I don't have to dig through furry too...)
In other news, AI music is flooding my Spotify recommended lately, and video is slowly becoming a thing as evidenced by that Twilight going viral a few days ago. We never did talk about AI writing before either did we? It's funny how everyone just collectively gave up on that one, which isn't surprising considering how even university professors are throwing in the towel on that front. I admit, I've genned many a choose your own adventure pony story in my time since AIdungeon appeared back almost half a decade ago. Hell, It's the only thing Grok is currently the best at due to its "unhinged mode" and free access. Having tested the limits of its filter, I can confirm that there just isn't one, no matter what horrifying subject matter you ask it for. Hopefully art can fight just a little longer while the corporate overlords fumble around with their search engines and agents now that they are done ruining it for us writers!
Now go commission an artist! Honestly this is all completely irrelevant if people keep supporting them.
