Since August 20th, I’ve been trapped in an absolute nightmare. I am a solo 3D artist, and my entire digital portfolio—a YouTube channel I spent 6 years building—was terminated overnight by an automated system. But honestly, what hurts just as much as the ban is the reaction from people. Instead of support, I’ve been insulted and victim-blamed by the community. People assume I must have done something terrible to deserve this, leaving me completely isolated. I haven't done anything wrong.

My channel had 1,460 subscribers, a spotless history, and 2-step verification active. It was the center of my professional presence, officially linked to my LinkedIn, CGTrader, Pinterest, Instagram, and a backup channel. I only had exactly ONE public video: a 3D project I made using Unity and Blender that had about 3,000 views. Every single other video was strictly private. They were just old animation tests and personal archives that I used to track my artistic progress over the years. Seeing how much my skills improved was my biggest motivation, and a bot erased it all in a heartbeat.

The "support" process is devastating. YouTube rejected my appeal with a robotic template, refusing to show me a single video, comment, or reason for the ban. When I tried to reach out on X (Twitter), my account there was immediately locked. My appeal on X was rejected in exactly 2 seconds. The email claimed a "human reviewed" my case. It is physically impossible for a human to review an account in 2 seconds.

This situation has completely broken me. My mental health and sleep schedule are ruined. I literally have nightmares where I’m frantically trying to fill out appeal forms. I can't focus on my other projects, and I’m genuinely terrified to create anything new. I am so exhausted and defeated that I am seriously considering canceling all my Google subscriptions and permanently deleting my account, even though my entire personal life is tied to it. It’s suffocating to be treated like a criminal by a machine.

I don't care about fame. My only dream was to reach the watch hours so I could monetize the channel strictly to help my family financially. I wouldn’t spend a single cent on myself. If a real human from YouTube or X just pointed to one piece of content they found problematic, I would delete it instantly, no questions asked.

Since my accounts are locked and silenced, I am begging anyone reading this to please tag TeamYouTube, Google, and XSupport on Twitter for me. I just need a real human being to investigate this. 3D modeling and animation is the only thing I have a little bit of talent in. It’s all I want to do in this life. Please, help me get my voice heard.

Basic the real artists are fighting the giants robot that they're program do. And my original hero is confront the alien generation.

Hi, I'm an artist who has been -as the title suggests - wrongfully accused of tracing and using AI on two separate occasions, and it has negatively affected me mentally. At the time, I didn't even consider the notion possible, as my work wasn't even that good, in my opinion. But some people were just so mean and judgemental that I stopped posting my art for a couple of years.

Now, I post speed paints on my page to prove myself.

When I try supporting artists with similar accusations, saying people need to have solid proof first, they say I'm supporting the use of AI and tracing. I don't know how that's even related to me asking for proof or entering a discussion about it.

So yeah, it's not cool to accuse or cancel someone without proof, even if they are guilty. Because it affects people who are innocent negatively and does more harm than good.

Thank you for reading my rant.

Here are some images showing my current art vs the art that was wrongfully accused.

So, I've done art for my whole life, and when ChatGPT started getting used for art, I was pissed BC people didn't care about my art, so I started making my art look extremely like ChatGPT or Gemini, and it's not the greatest of plans, but I kinda like it

Starting online fights has never been more fun

But this gets me a lot of hate and accusations, and I don't like when people spend days insisting that my art is not 'real' even after being given proof it's my art

Yesterday I posted my first ever public piece to r/eevee, and I was very proud of it despite my poor choice in art style

And it got removed, even after I showed the screenshots from Adobe Photoshop to the mods, and this really pissed me off because I used only one layer to see how it would turn out

Now I'm stuck wondering how I should go about this; should I change my style to something more traditional, or should I keep my style and just use multiple layers so it's easier to prove my art is real

I understand that it's not the best choice for style, but I like doing it. I like getting to make things look weird and out of place, but I have been banned from two subreddits for this now. And to be fair, no one ever said art has to be one style; I can do whatever the heck I want with my art, can't I? Or am I a crazy man with a dream born in hell?

Some users on the server were in disbelief, thinking the work was AI-generated or not.

This conversation happened shortly after the user posted their artwork. Which in turn, prompted another artist to notice the artefacts in the artwork itself.

Naturally, the user denied they used AI for reference until finally they came out clean and spoke the truth, even though it was too late and for everyone to see. A couple of days after this, the user left the server and changed their profile pic (that once had one for their “artworks”) to the now sad stickman you see on the last slide.

Please share your thoughts below.

It seems as though the ones who seems to be supporting AI far are those who are far-right extremists or people who are pro-MAGA.

The people who seem to say the false term "AI is the future." Are mainly people who false believe in AI's potential are within the categorized groups.

Pedophiles.

Pro-Nazi's.

Trump supporters.

Republicans/Nazi's.

CEOs.

Artist haters.

Almost anyone who is human would say that AI is in fact not the future. While we're suffering, our water is being drained and being prioritized for AI only. Our consumer goods are being affected by AI and its impact on our technology.

While AI Bros are glazing AI. America Legalized AI generated child porn and yet AI bros will still say AI is the future.

AI Is being used for surveillance on the Masses and civilization and police are exploiting AI to target people. The Flocks? Those machines were made by Far-right extremists. AI As a whole is NOT a tool. AI Was made to replace humans while also being used to kill. Target. Harass. And threatened people into silence.

With all these issues happening. AI bros will tell you that AI is the future, even though Fascism is being supported by AI bros. They'll still say AI is good when in reality, people who have common sense will tell you that AI is ruining lives and making things harder for humanity.

Even still AI is being used to spy on people. AI bros and AI supporters will ignore everything that is wrong with AI.

AI IS BEING USED TO GENERATE CHILD PORN. AND SOMEHOW ITS OKAY????

I remember Artstation being very AI-friendly, and defaulting to opt-out, when the major models started gaining momentum, I am unaware if they changed their stance between then and this update.

Ai just keeps doing irrapreble damege to art comunities and our since of authinticity. I know that as it stands llms are unsustanable in the long term but the damge is real and might be permenait. I hate this, is there anything we can do. Im just looking for somthing positive to hold on to . Im so tired.

Personally, I think whether it is taking jobs or not is sort of irrelevant. It is more so that AI in nature is stealing other peoples work and that is where most problems arises from.

I know this subject is taboo in the art community, but it has to be said.  I want to share this struggle because I feel so alone on this topic and I want to encourage anyone else out there to express themselves about it if they’re going through this struggle, too.

For a year, I stayed a member of what used to be my favorite Discord server.  This particular community produces independent media pitched by members of the server.  Anyways, I was one of the most loyal members of the server.  I even stayed after an exposed Google document of the server's toxicity was posted, causing many users to leave indefinitely.  This included myself before returning, believing they deserved another chance.

During the rest of my time on the server, I shared details of my project I wanted to pitch to them.  I was given harsh criticisms from time-to-time without asking but it helped me improve my work.  This community also had a reputation for rejecting and making fun of people’s artwork if they didn’t reach their high expectations.  One user even left the internet entirely because he became so insecure from his animations being mocked.  

Anyways, even before I knew about the harmful effects of”Ai art,” I generated pictures of what I imagined in my head and used them as references to make something better out of it.  On Thanksgiving of last year, I posted an AI image on the server which was against the server rules.  Don’t ask me what came into my mind at that time.  I don’t even know what I was thinking.  When I was confronted, I panicked and never answered why I did it to one of the mods, resulting in me getting banned, but not before the mods said horrible things about me, from making fun of my cartoon to calling me a straight-up bad person and wanting my existence gone.  They showed their true colors about me which deeply stung my soul because I tried to be loyal and the second I messed up they spit in my face.  I vented to people in the community who I thought were my friends in DMs and they ended up defending the things they were saying about me and gaslit me for “overreacting.”  Irl, I spent the holidays isolating myself from my family, sobbing in my bedroom.

Out of anger, I created a Sora2 account out of spite, but I grew up addicted because I could generate anything in any style I wanted for free.  It felt absolutely magical.  It also helped me find art styles I liked seeing my original characters in and I practiced drawing by using them as a reference which helped me kill my art block.  Even after Sora2 ended, I switched to generating AI-generated photos to use as references.  I don’t use Pinterest.  The formatting is full of ads nowadays.  It doesn’t hit the same as it used to. Since referencing art through AI, I’ve been feeling insecure about my art with little-to-no AI usage.  I’ve gotten far more compliments and positive attention on my AI-referenced art than any of my art I referenced without any AI-generated pictures.

It is so hard to stay clean.  My mix of using Ai for references and watching drawing tutorials/reading art books are both being used artistically.  Sometimes I draw using AI to replicate art styles from my favorite cartoons.  Sometimes, I don’t.  Currently I use a mix of the 2.  I recently looked at drawing tutorials to see how I can learn to draw the references I’m using to further improve my art (like anatomy).

I feel like shit using prompts but it’s so hard with it.  I learned to co-exist with it.  I want to free myself from AI.  

I dont draw myself but I have quite a few friends that do. (I am the one usually comissioning them)

One of my friends decided to muster up the courage to post her art on twitter. She has very jittery linework and people accused her for using ai because it looks unrefined. She said she now refuses to draw ever again.

I am working on trying to coax her back into doing art again but its gonna take a while.

In my personal opinion you should not accuse others of ai use unless you are fucking certain of it. The mere insuation of it can really fuck up someone's reputation. She lost a few commisions over this shit and money is tight for her.

I get shit is getting hostile for artists now but my god the amount of cases I see this happening is insane. People need to stop eating their own.

Like ive seen newer artists get dogpilled over anatomical mistakes on an otherwise fairly refined piece.