How do you tell when something is AI art?

[overgeeked]

But this one...



You'd have to ask the artist for original digital files showing they worked on the image. Even then, it's fairly easy to fake a lot of that.

Take that image, drop the CMY channels, go in and remove the shading, and you're left with the line art. Touch that up, then drop the shading and color into separate layers. There'd basically be no way to tell. Unless you force people to work with pen and ink and physically ship their originals and sketches to you.

You can also have the "AI" provide black and white line art from the jump. Shading and coloring that would be dead simple.

From there, how do you prove the person created the original line art?

Like this.



It would take someone who knew what they were doing maybe 15-20 minutes to do a basic shading and coloring of that.

(Except for the wrong number of fingers on the left hand, but that's not the point I was illustrating.)

 

[Reynard]

The real question is,I think, what difference does it make?

If I have a budget of $X, and I want to commission a piece for a book, and I hire an artist to produce it, should it matter how they went about creating it? Assuming the piece is high enough quality and otherwise meets my needs, do I even have the right to interrogate the artist about their process?

What if the artist used AI to produce concepts and I chose one and then they created the final piece manually?

What if they started with an AI piece but then manually finished it?

What if they manually started then had AI assist with finishing?

What if, all that considered, the AI in question was ethically trained (as in trained on public domain images and images whose creators opted in)?

 

[Morrus]

At present some of the dead giveaways are hands, fingers (number/angles), feet, eyes, any text, objects merging/blurring together, guns, noise/debris, and things that should be straight lines. Some of this stuff might be attributed to the artist making a choice, but most of it is too obvious to be an intentional artistic choice. That said, I've seen "AI" art that is better than what some publishers put out. Hands are hard to draw right, even for people. I'd take most "AI" art over anything from Rob Liefeld, for example.

The more the art tries to depict things we're familiar with, the more obvious it will be that it's "AI" art. The uncanny valley. We know what it's supposed to look like, but it's wrong. The more details the art includes, the more likely the "AI" is to get something wrong. Once you prompt the thing to not depict humans, human-like creatures, or objects we're familiar with...or to use a simpler, more abstract art style, things get a lot harder to spot.

Another dead giveaway is consistency over time. Even with an incredibly detailed prompt, the thing won't produce similar results over time. All three of the Hulk images are from the same prompt. It's like three different artists drew those. Having the same character, with the same details, appear in different situations is basically impossible.

Here are some examples.

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Too many fingers.

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The feet.

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The feet.

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The text on the jerseys. The pucks and sticks are clearly wrong. All beyond "artistic choice" as an excuse.

But this one...

View attachment 347594

I don't immediately see anything that couldn't be attributed to "artistic choice."

There’s “artistic choice” and also there’s “art is really hard”. Errors don’t necessarily mean AI. Neither do things which don’t look right—nothing I draw looks right, but it isn’t AI. I just can’t draw.

 

[overgeeked]

There’s “artistic choice” and also there’s “art is really hard”. Errors don’t necessarily mean AI. Neither do things which don’t look right—nothing I draw looks right, but it isn’t AI. I just can’t draw.

I think it’s down to you not being a pro artist that someone would give money to for your art. When you, as a publisher, contact a pro artist to pay them for their art, you can certainly ask for and expect things like the correct number of fingers on a hand or anatomically correct placement of feet. Unless we’re talking about commercial projects, it doesn’t really matter if something is “AI” art or not.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The real question is,I think, what difference does it make?

If I have a budget of $X, and I want to commission a piece for a book, and I hire an artist to produce it, should it matter how they went about creating it? Assuming the piece is high enough quality and otherwise meets my needs, do I even have the right to interrogate the artist about their process?

What if the artist used AI to produce concepts and I chose one and then they created the final piece manually?

What if they started with an AI piece but then manually finished it?

What if they manually started then had AI assist with finishing?

What if, all that considered, the AI in question was ethically trained (as in trained on public domain images and images whose creators opted in)?

This is the 64 million dollar question and I do not think that the answer is simple or straightforward.
A lot of this is, it depends. If Acme MegaCorp is churning out mass entertainment using AI to do everything from the acting, writing, animation and production while, actors, writer, directors and all the people that normally make a movie are starving or on the breadline. That is one thing.
It is something different, if, in a post scarcity society all of the people enjoy a basic level of food, energy and housing security.
Then there is who is doing this. Some nobody in a basement eking out a living at the margin of society creating art using free online AI tools to make an animated movie on their own screenplay, is again different from a corporation or even a well-funded individual doing something similar.
The social context and consequences matter and that is part of the current issue. We do not know where this is going but we have people telling us that this will result in the entire economy being automated.
It is a bit like blackface, the issue with blackface was that white people were being employed to deliberately not employ black people.

AI being used to do thing people cannot or do not want to do is one thing, it being used in order to not hire people is another thing.
Now the latter, AI being used to not hire people may be mitigated by granting freely all that one need to meet survival needs but does open the social question, what does one do with one's life when one is not in the top 1% or so in the things one is good at.

 

[Morrus]

I think it’s down to you not being a pro artist that someone would give money to for your art. When you, as a publisher, contact a pro artist to pay them for their art, you can certainly ask for and expect things like the correct number of fingers on a hand or anatomically correct placement of feet.

Wrong number of fingers, sure. That's the low hanging fruit. I can spot wrong number of fingers.

Artists not being able to do feet and hands well? That's a well-known thing. There are famous comic book artists who can't do them. Badly drawn hands and feet are not necessarily a sign of AI art.

Unless we’re talking about commercial projects, it doesn’t really matter if something is “AI” art or not.

It matters for the purposes of this thread. It might not matter for the purposes of a different thread which isn't this one.

 

[Morrus]

The real question is,I think, what difference does it make?

No, the real question was how do you tell whether something is AI?

That may be your question, but it ain't mine. Honestly, I'm not interested re-debating the ethics of AI art for the thousandth time (I'm comfortable with my position on that); I'm just asking how you tell.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

No, the real question was how do you tell whether something is AI?

That may be your question, but it ain't mine.

If the AI is good enough, you will not be able to tell.

 

[Morrus]

If the AI is good enough, you will not be able to tell.

Eventually, for sure. Maybe even soon. We aren't there yet though.

 

[overgeeked]

If the AI is good enough, you will not be able to tell.

I’d say when the “AI” gets good enough you won’t be able to tell. Then it becomes a philosophical question of what is “art” and can non-sentient beings produce it.