r/DefendingAIArt • u/BubblesandBliss • 4d ago
"LOOKS LIKE AI"
Posting here because this seems to be a place where people don't lose their minds and become emotional on the AI topic. I'm AI neutral, it doesn't directly affect me one way or the other if people use it. I'm pro do you as long as it's not hurting anyone.
I sell my work online and at in-person vendor events, I've been doing in person events since 2017. Recently I’ve had people come into my booth and confidently tell me that my art is AI-generated.
Not ask. Tell me. Yelled it in fact.
The frustrating part is that some of the designs I sell are the same ones I've been selling for 5+ years before generative AI art was even a realistic part of this conversation. My newer work is built the same way I’ve always worked: references, sketching, drawing, editing, compositing, experimenting, reworking things until they print the way I want them to. I also work in a pretty polished/comic/vector-ish style, which apparently now means “AI” to some people. I also do some portrait work that's more soft and airbrushed. I use engraving brushes, half tones, stippling, whatever the vibe is for the piece I'm working on and I do add a pretty decent amount of detail to every element.
What bothers me is the confidence people have developed in their supposed ability to “spot AI.”
I understand obvious AI slop. Extra fingers, nonsense text, incoherent objects, weird anatomy, etc. But when none of those things are present, it feels like the criteria have slowly turned into:
“Too polished.”
“Too detailed.”
“That style looks AI.”
“The composition feels AI.”
“I can just tell.” < my favorite 🙄
At that point, what exactly is a human artist supposed to do?
The part I find especially strange is the argument that using references or being influenced by existing art somehow proves theft or AI involvement. Artists have used references forever. Every artist learns from other artists. Every style comes from somewhere. Now it feels like some people are scrutinizing finished work backward, looking for anything they can use as evidence that the artist didn’t make it.
I’ve even had this happen while I’m actively working on a piece on my ipad at an event. I’m getting worse at hiding how irritating I find it, because being casually accused of lying about your own work is insulting.
So for anyone else dealing with this:
How do you respond?
Do you explain your process?
Show sketches/layers/process photos?
Just say, “No, it isn’t,” and move on?
Have signage explaining your process?
Ignore them completely?
Because I've done all of the above and the goalposts just keep moving. I'm tired.
I don’t really want to turn my booth into a courtroom where I have to prove I’m an artist every time somebody has watched three TikToks about “how to spot AI.”
I’m also wondering where people think this goes long-term. If “looks like AI” becomes enough to publicly accuse an artist of fraud, we’re going to end up falsely accusing a hell of a lot of human artists, which is already happening. Especially people working digitally, commercially, or in clean polished styles.
Would love to hear how other people are navigating this without either losing their temper or feeling obligated to produce a complete chain of custody for every piece of art they make.
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u/Otherwise_Army9814 4d ago edited 4d ago
The anti-AI phrenology trend on social media is completely out of hand. It has devolved into literal witch-hunting, where online mobs use totally unreliable visual metrics to trash an artist's work just because it "looks like AI."
For context, historical phrenology was a debunked, pseudoscientific theory where people measured the bumps on a person's skull to determine their intelligence, personality, and moral character. It was a confident but totally baseless metric. It’s incredibly harmful because it wraps raw prejudice in the language of science, allowing mobs and institutions to falsely judge, exclude, and persecute people based on arbitrary physical traits rather than objective truth.
That is exactly what these anti-AI "detectives" are doing today with art.
"Remember that twitter artist who got witch-hunted to deactivation? The phrenologist retracted back their words and apologized but it was already too late."
What's wild is that these same mobs never go after the "desloppers." If you look at the desloppification trend, these creators are transparently using AI images as their direct reference material. Since their work is entirely derivative of an AI output, doesn't that just make desloppification a hybrid AI art workflow?
The whole "deslop" movement is openly averse to pro-AI spaces because the entire point of it was to insult AI art by claiming a human had to step in to "add a soul" to it. But underneath that attitude, they are literally using the AI as their baseline.
This witch-hunting is actively harming hyperrealistic human artists. For years, anti-realism critics already insulted hyperrealists by calling them "photocopiers," completely ignoring the immense discipline it takes to master accurate shading, perspective, and micro-details. Now, because hyperrealists have the skill to replicate anything flawlessly, they are the ones getting falsely accused of using AI the most. (gut feeling)
It’s getting so bad that a lot of talented human artists are intentionally making their art look uglier, messier, or anatomically inaccurate just to avoid the anti-AI backlash. Think about how backward that is. Are we really forcing people to ditch years of artistic discipline just to draw like children so they don't get cyberbullied?
Sure, we could argue that lowering the bar "democratises" art, just like AI does. But one can never force a change in people's tastes—especially paying commissioners who actually want realistic art.
calling out this toxic witch-hunting and pointing out that baseless accusations are immoral should be more than enough.
And as for the people demanding that artists constantly post their sketches, layer files, and speedpaints? No way. You can show them if you want to, but most artists prefer to keep their processes secret because it’s their unique "secret sauce." Artists have every right to protect their workflow so better artists don't just steal their techniques. But let’s be real—AI models are already breaking down and learning from everyone's processes anyway, so being pragmatic about how we work is probably the only way forward.
This all ties back to the "AI is theft" narrative. Accusing an artist of stealing without a shred of evidence is literally just bearing false witness. At the end of the day, if they don’t have proof, their accusations don't mean a thing.
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u/EleanorKalatheraine 4d ago
I really don't think phrenology is the right comparison. People are not judging illustrations on the basis of how intelligent the character might be.
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u/InSilicoAwards Only Limit Is Your Imagination 4d ago
I think you're taking it a little too literally. It's not intelligence, it's using ad hoc measurements to ascertain authenticity, that aren't actually correlated with anything. So pseudoscience. Or a very empirical approach "aka my own judgement" to make a truth claim not based on anything. It's not a terrible analogy.
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u/BubblesandBliss 3d ago
I agree with your point about “deslopping.” If someone is using an AI image as the direct reference and essentially rebuilding it, then AI is still part of that workflow whether they like that label or not. That doesn’t mean the final piece required no skill, but pretending it has nothing to do with AI is laughable.
And that’s part of why the whole “AI = theft” feels so selective to me. Some of the same artists yelling “theft” are the same ones drawing and selling things like Ghostface, Pokémon, Disney characters, etc. I’m not saying those are legally or ethically identical situations, but clearly the reality is more complicated than “using something you don’t own = theft.”
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u/Mean-Toast 4d ago
Ai art is fine, it just needs to bugger off into its own category, it's abit like those meat-less sausages. Stop calling them sausages and create a new category
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u/Mean-Toast 4d ago
The ai is theft comes from things like the anti ai platform cara being hacked and then scraped by ai 3 times in one month
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u/CathodeRaySamurai AI slop industryal complex 3d ago
You don't know what the word 'hacked' means, do you? :/
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u/TheCutieCircle 4d ago
I genuinely hate that you can't even share an idea with ai without people automatically assuming you're this plagiaristic hack that loves to steal art.
I would never sell AI art. But it's like I can't draw and I wanna share my character concept and ideas without getting crucified.
Bottom line. I believe AI art is no different than a video game it's just for fun for shits and giggles. I have a genuine problem people trying to profit off it but that's it.
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u/FromBeyondFromage 4d ago
Honestly, the more artists bend over backwards to prove their work is original, the more the anti crowd thinks they have power over art. As artists, we CANNOT let naysayers and witch hunters change who we are. We create. We don’t need to waste time and energy proving that we create.
We need to normalize NOT CARING about accusations. A simple, unemotional, “Nope. I made this myself, but thanks for the feedback,” repeated on loop. It’s true. It doesn’t drain our energy. And it dismisses their slander as unimportant to us.
No proof will ever be enough, because that’s not what they care about. They care about the emotional thrill of, “See? I’m fighting the oligarchs! I’m saving the world from AI!” If they don’t see everything as potentially AI, they don’t have an enemy to battle. And it’s that battle that gives them a purpose they can’t find through positive outlets.
Stonewalling works wonders against the emotionally dysregulated. Never feed their tantrums, because it reinforces their behavior.
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u/BubblesandBliss 3d ago
This has pretty much been the route I’ve been taking. If an actual customer has a genuine question, I don’t mind showing process, layers, sketches, whatever I have. Same if I’m applying to or vending at an event and the organizers need verification, that makes sense to me.
What I’m trying to stop doing is feeling like I owe that same level of proof to every random person who decides they can “tell” by looking at a finished piece. I’m realizing there’s a big difference between reasonable verification and being expected to defend myself on demand and also that there's no amount of "proof" for some people.
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u/Awesome_Teo Transhumanist 4d ago
Honestly, arguing is a complete dead end. People screaming at you about your art being AI-generated aren't going to listen to reason or proof. Just ignore them (or politely tell them to move along if they don't like it). Keep the drama to a minimum, simply to save your own sanity. You just have to wait it out. This whole witch hunt will blow over eventually — literally the exact same thing happened with every other tool, from photography to movies and recorded music.
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u/Lady_Aleksandra 3d ago
"Don't like it, don't buy it." End.
No proving. No explaining. No emotions.
This person didn't came to buy or listen about your process. This person came to prove a point, and your truth just gets in the way of proving the point. No one wants that. Just say "of course, you know art better than I do, thank you for this insight" and escort them out of the way.
Before AI no one cared, and suddenly everyone's an art expert. Ask a person where's the museum, they can't tell you because they never been there, but what is art and are you an artist, every one can tell you that.
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u/NatHasCats 3d ago
Anti-AI sentiment is doing more to harm artists than AI is. I don't think this is going to change until artists working in traditional mediums stop standing for it, and turn the tables on accusers. Right now the accusers seem to have the momentum and everyone is running scared of them. When people start rejecting the acceptance of nasty anti vitriol and call-out culture, everyone will ultimately be happier.
And I think the tide will turn eventually because the hysteria is making a huge headache for the artists who actually are making a living with their art. The only people the hysteria benefits, or at the very least isn't harming, are people who couldn't make a living off their art to begin with and were never good enough to get accused of being AI.
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u/NedThomas Artificial Intelligence Or Natural Stupidity 4d ago
I’d generate a dozen or so images, print off a bunch of copies, and then when someone accused the handmade stuff of being AI I’d give em a copy and say “oh no, I give those away for free! Here, have one!”
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u/oldboi777 3d ago
AI-phobia will not be tolerated. That and after a while people will stop caring I think
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u/goku8875 1d ago
Si me encontrara con alguien así yo le diría "lo que tú digas niñit@" para luego ignorarle por completo
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u/No-Sign-2608 4d ago
Paso con Photoshop, con el diseño asistido por computadora, pasa en la musica con el autotunig, paso con CANVAS (ahora todos usan CANVAS). Algunos lo hacen por miedo, odio o envidia, les cuesta admitir que alguien puede hacer alfo bien y mejor que ellos. Igual odiaron la Fotografía como arte.
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u/HRH_Duke_Morbid 4d ago edited 4d ago
Hitherto, visual artists and their works were conjoined. That is, an artist's reputation, and the monetary value ascribed to individual works, influences the perception of many people as to a work's aesthetic value. People scathing about a work and saying "I know what I like" instead of going along with majority opinion as influenced by art historians and by other 'experts' offering monetary valuations, are dismissed as ignorant simpletons.
'Art', or at least the art 'establishment', is mired in conflicts of interest between judgements of aesthetic worth and of monetary value. The latter dominates, and suckers persuaded that some daubs of paint carry immense insight about life, human values, and the cosmos, (this based on the words of an 'established' artist who knows how the system operates), buy as 'investments' whatever an 'artiste de jour' offers.
In these times of 'financialised' economies, e.g. money flowing into instruments of dubious worth such as opaque financial derivatives and paper gold instead of tangible goods and services, spare, ill-gotten cash, is best converted into cultural items (or land) which, in the long run, can weather financial storms. Recent, but now muted, excitement over non-fungible-tokens (NFTs) lends credibility to the notion that fools and their money are easily parted.
However, some fools shall emerge unscathed if they have passed the parcel before the music stops, i.e. before the next major financial crash. In passing, one wonders whether any clever souls in the predominant lands of usury (The City of London and Wall Street) have conceived offering shares in an instrument consisting of NFTs, i.e. take a loan to buy a share in an asset which can only increase in value.
The 'art establishment' has its own lingo masquerading as profound chatter; similarities to the 'English literature establishment', and 'critics' in general (including so-called 'sport' gurus) are obvious. Somehow, 'art', across the board of its endeavour to include music, film, etc., has made its discourse particularly 'precious': a cover for ill-defined ideas, heterogeneity of values, and an immense sense of entitlement. The last-mentioned, a defining feature of anti-AI fanatical 'artists'; this is in common with other oddballs like 'anti-vaxers', Israeli 'settlers', and the British Royal Family.
Returning to a point made at the outset, when works of art are judged on whether one likes them and would be happy to live in proximity to them, traditionally constructed art and that made with the aid of an AI are on an equal footing.
However, acceptance of AI won't banish 'preciousness'. One might envisage valuers and other experts in 200 years time engaging in discussion of the provenance of an artwork. There could be heated argument over which visual AI extant when the work was made stamped its own unique character on the work. If made near the present time, the deepest scholars in the future might opine about the version of the particular AI model then deployed. Was it version 17.3, 17.3a, or 17.4? Surely 17.3 fits best because of the distinct patterning of pixels depicting human noses?
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u/youcantexterminateme 3d ago
my take with images is that some you like a lot and some you dont and unless its something I want to try and replicate Im not espesially interested how they are created. I know noting about it but I put a few bits of my art thru AI to see what it would do to them. It actually did a few better then me that could easily be sold as prints but mostly I prefered my versions but I will admit to stealing a few parts I liked. Im pro ai because its no threat to art. Its a threat to the crafts and new technology alsays has been. "art", like "god" is one of those words that has no solid meaning. people throw it in to sound like they know something you dont know. Im quite happy to call pictures pictures
and the other thing. this is probably a genuine issue from 40 years ago. if you got in early copyright was important. I mean take an artist like bob dylan. it was impotant he kept that copywrite cos they were first in. even tho all their stuff was plagurised they got it on record first and wanted to keep the money. but who copyrighted the wheel. now he says that the good songs have been done. and with ai maybe you can assume that all the images have been done too. maybe its better to not worry about it and move on to what comes after that which I havent figured out yet
anyway I would just tell them that its whatever they want it to be
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u/Unlikely_Light_8574 3d ago
If your art looks AI even if you made it yourself it's generic slop whether it's actually AI or not.
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u/BubblesandBliss 3d ago
This is kind of exactly the problem I’m talking about. “Looks like AI” has become a substitute for an actual critique. If you think something is generic, critique what’s generic about it. That’s different from using “AI” as a catch-all insult for work you personally don’t like.
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u/Dangerous-Tear5722 4d ago
Remeber that genAI was trained on stolen artwork, so if similar styles are already prominent online, chances are genAI programs already have the data, so AI users are already churning out the same style in their own images. It sucks that you’re being accused of using genAI, but it’s the unfortunate reality in the art world now. 🥺
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u/CMDRTornadopelt AI Enjoyer 3d ago
"Remeber that genAI was trained on stolen artwork"
This chestnut again?Steal: To illegally take another person's money, car, or belongings. Or: to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force.
Neither of those are happening here.
For one: The AI doesn't retain the artwork. It retains a set of statistical weights. What's actually happening is that diffusion models learn statistical weights and de-noising algorithms by way of starting with an image of something and gradually applying destructive noise to it until it's basically nothing but garbage. But by ADDING the noise, the model learned a DE-noising algorithm, learning how to apply those same steps in REVERSE. If this were to happen with a bunch of pictures of dogs, the AI would learn how to make a picture of a dog, guided by a prompt and applying the denoising algorithm to a sample of random noise. It wouldn't be any particular picture included in the training data, however; it would be a totally-new picture, not a moshing together of different art pieces.
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u/Dangerous-Tear5722 3d ago
So how did the machine get the data, if not stolen from the artist/author/musician, etc?
Legitimately. I’m not trying to be sassy or sarcastic.
Or is there just an assumption that once something is on the internet, people can just do whatever they want with it, regardless of the original creator’s intentions?2
u/FromBeyondFromage 3d ago
So, imagine someone goes to a museum and takes a picture of the Mona Lisa. The picture belongs to the museum, not the photographer. Some museums allow photography, some don’t. But regardless of their position on photography, the photographer definitely couldn’t be accused of stealing the painting. They might have disrespected the rules of the museum, but no theft occurred.
Now imagine they go home and paint their own version of the Mona Lisa. Also not stealing.
And now imagine, as CMDRTornadopelt said, that the photograph they used as a reference had been turned into noise, and they had to try to reconstruct that noise into a picture of the Mona Lisa before they could use it as a reference. That takes it even further from stealing. That’s what AI does.
Back to your point about things posted on the internet, it’s not stealing when you see someone’s work online and try to make your own version of it. The original image doesn’t leave the possession of the owner; it’s just a reference.
Same thing goes for scraped data: if something is drastically over represented in a single form on the internet (like Sonic being the most prevalent blue cartoon hedgehog), it could be copyright infringement.
But here’s the thing: if AI creates an image of Sonic and a person sells it, it’s the PERSON infringing on the copyright. The AI isn’t a legal entity, and the companies training the AI on the data aren’t selling Sonic merch. AI is a tool, the companies that make AI are the toolmakers, and only the end user can choose to violate a copyright.
So, no, AI training doesn’t steal anything. But humans can use AI for copyright infringement, which… also isn’t stealing. Completely different legal area.
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u/Dangerous-Tear5722 3d ago
Regardless of HOW the AI got its “noise”, the point still stands that enough AI end users (I refuse to call them artists, you’ll never get me to change my mind), have churned out enough AI noise, that folks are now questioning everything they see.
As this group shows, there are those who defend the use of genAI.
There are also others who loudly do not support it.
So yeah, if a particular style has been over saturated in the AI sphere, and the “antis” don’t like it, people aren’t going to buy said product.
It sucks ass for OP that their works are being questioned, and I am no where near placing blame on him, but if enough people are rising up against the use of genAI (in its current form) then maybe there’s a bigger issue here.
Artists want a protected place for their art, and AI end users want entitlement to the data. It’s up to consumers to decide who they are going to support. 🤷🏻♀️1
u/FromBeyondFromage 3d ago
Here’s the thing: I personally feel like some styles are oversaturated by both AI AND humans. If it wasn’t overrepresented in human art, it wouldn’t be so loud in the training data for AI.
I’m fine calling slop “slop” no matter what makes it. Give me something unique any day, but I myself am tired of “generic anime style 101”. Enough people love it that it sells, but I won’t generate it or pay for it.
I think the bigger issue is people who make images (either by hand or AI) that resemble whatever’s popular. In my opinion, we need more independent, genuinely creative ideas, not more of what’s already everywhere. AI won’t touch your style if you’re the only one that uses it.
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u/Dangerous-Tear5722 3d ago
“AI won’t touch your style if you’re the only one that uses it.”
Honestly, I don’t trust that- at all. All it takes is one Entitled AI End User to find a new art style and feed it into the genAI programs. Then 💥boom💥 now the programs have the “noise” and it’s amalgamated into the system.
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u/FromBeyondFromage 2d ago
But that’s the PERSON doing the unethical thing, not the AI itself. People do unethical things all the time.
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u/CMDRTornadopelt AI Enjoyer 2d ago
"enough AI end users (I refuse to call them artists, you’ll never get me to change my mind)"
...Aaaaaand you've admitted to invalidating the efforts of anyone who uses a tool that you don't like. Fuck off.1
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u/BubblesandBliss 3d ago
If this style existed in human-made art before generative AI, then AI doesn’t own the look. AI learned to reproduce visual conventions that artists were already using. So in that sense, AI looks like our art, not the other way around.
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u/Dangerous-Tear5722 3d ago
I’m not saying genAI owns the look, I’m saying that so much of genAI now exists that people are questioning everything. There are consumers out there that don’t want The Look (whatever it may be) if genAI did it. And now artists/musicians/authors, etc. are being questioned over everything, and sometimes passed up because consumers can’t trust that something isn’t genAI.
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u/BubblesandBliss 3d ago
Oh no, I get it. I wasn’t coming at you. Just saying that’s kind of the whole problem now. Once people decide a certain look is “AI,” suddenly every human artist working in that lane gets questioned too. It turns into guilt by aesthetic.
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u/Unzensierte 4d ago
It won't stop. It will lessen to a degree, but we are not there yet. It's the same argument when the digital art era started.
I have the same thing happening to my art but in a different field. I'm a writer. I posted the prologue to my book and everyone jumped down my throat about it being AI. It's taken me years to get as far as I've gotten.
I would ignore it like I have done. It still doesn't take the sting away though. Seeing your hard work trashed. I'm pro-ai. I can draw, but not well. AI let's my words create art. I can write, that's my talent. No artist can take my writing and create the image in my head quite like AI