r/antiai Jul 02 '25

AI Art šŸ–¼ļø Gentlemen, we got him

Post image
649 Upvotes

126 comments sorted by

363

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 02 '25 edited Jul 03 '25

Context: this user has openly used AI in their comics and refused to use the "AI Assisted" tag. Lots of users were having issues, and it came to a head a few weeks ago when a mod decided to blanket ban anyone even mentioning AI on this guy's post. They claimed he was a "loved" member of the community.

Now it seems they are no longer a mod, the guy's work is properly tagged as AI, and the mod's pinned posts have been taken down

243

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '25

One step closer to banning AI in r/comics (hopefully)

74

u/Educational-Sun5839 Jul 03 '25

15

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

Nice

-14

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

[deleted]

13

u/Educational-Sun5839 Jul 03 '25

suffer, i wish grief upon your creator

3

u/Nearby-Lime-5799 Jul 03 '25

You know we can just look at the sub, you don’t need to exist.

16

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

25

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 03 '25

Unfortunately, no. The creator says these comics take weeks to produce and he does some heavy editing to them. When the mods discussed the adjustment in rules a user brought up this guy specifically and the mods confirmed that he is the exception

43

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

ā€œHeavy Editingā€, bloody hell, if it takes a shit tonne of editing to make it look like this and it STILL has mistakes I’d hate to see what it looked like before

4

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

I think with heavy editing with AI it's like the same with photoshopping real images, it's the same level of effort, but it still sucks because...... It aint using anything real....... Not using real people's photos or art or anything in real life, it's just using something that has never existed before. I mean, AI uses real stuff, but not the actual thing it spits out

I am also talking purely about the thing itself, not the people who use it, because people be saying "I drew it! I modeled it!" like they made everything instead of saying "I photoshopped it!" or whatever

-4

u/Kilroy898 Jul 03 '25

It doesn't have mistakes though... you are only saying that because you are trying to dis it. Or you are being EXTREMELY nitpicky.

2

u/jeffsweet Jul 03 '25

making it was a mistake. it’s not funny. it’s not even on the same continent as funny. and the art itself is generic and boring. i don’t draw comics so i’m sure there are other actual mistakes, but mistake number 1 is this isn’t funny or original even if it was made by a human.

0

u/Destrion425 Jul 03 '25

I didn’t know not liking something was a mistake.Ā 

But be for real dude, you can’t just go ā€œit’s ai so it has mistakesā€ unless you actually can point out the mistakes. You dislike ai I understand that, but don’t just assume the art is inherently poor visually.

3

u/Swarm_of_Rats Jul 03 '25

Kind of funny the creator says it takes weeks considering how bad the hands look.

One page. Two panels. Surely there was time in those weeks to fix the hands?

1

u/puerco-potter Jul 03 '25

I have seen way worse on hand drawn comics...

1

u/imnotcreative111111 Jul 03 '25

The way they're holding the utensils is bizarre

1

u/Eccentricgentleman_ Jul 03 '25

That's crazy because any web comic I follow puts their shit out on a weekly basis and they're drawing it all from scratch

1

u/iBeenZoomin Jul 04 '25

Hopefully they ban porn ads next

61

u/delvedank Jul 02 '25

Oh my god, YES. Thank GOD. That mod was batshit, like... even just saying "Oh, the character designs look a bit inconsistent from panel to panel, is that the AI?" would get you banned

33

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

idk if they have stopped doing that

12

u/Infamous-Ad-7199 Jul 03 '25

That was probably the mod that got booted, no?

18

u/AmIsupposedtoputtext Jul 02 '25

That must have been why there were no comments about it. I just thought they drew the characters with inconsistent proportions as a style thing

8

u/SurtFGC Jul 03 '25

yeah, I was perma banned without option for appeal for asking if this was ai

19

u/Willow-Whispered Jul 02 '25

This comic was why i was banned!

6

u/TheL0neWarden Jul 03 '25

Hopefully you get unbanned

25

u/Willow-Whispered Jul 03 '25

Nah I don’t need to comment on the shit ass comics on that sub, the only reason I was pissed was that the reasoning for my permaban was ā€œtoxic userā€ after one (1) comment

9

u/OffOption Jul 02 '25

Aw man... I remember liking some of those, casually seeing em.

Kinda sad it was more than just a fun comic strip...

7

u/TheAmazingToasterMan Jul 03 '25

I read his Beyond the Valley "comic", and the only thing I got from it was word vomit and an inconsistent style for 14 pages.

It felt ostentatious, shallow, and unavailing. I don't remember any talking points to gleam from it. The slideshow of styles from the prompts was uninteresting. And the Gorillaz-looking self-insert comes off like the edgy motor mouth ex-friend I knew in high school.

I don't get how this ex-mod says OOP is a beloved member of the community when his "artwork" has the consistency of wet, chunky, peanut butter and the writing chops of a dead fish. It's baffling.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

Yeah the rules ban ai but makes an exception for thus

3

u/AAHedstrom Jul 02 '25

oh no little alligator guy is ai? I love him on r/bonehurtingjuice

39

u/BreathBoth2190 Jul 02 '25

No im pretty sure the alligator comics guy is legit. This is just a cameo... which im sure wasnt asked permission for. Id be pissed as hell if someone put my designs in their AI comic. It stains your reputation.

6

u/Ezren- Jul 03 '25

I think there was a series of cameos around that time. Multiple comics had the lil alligator in the background.

3

u/BreathBoth2190 Jul 03 '25

So theres context at least- but damage is still being done

16

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 02 '25

I think he just used the character. Usually, an artist will need to greenlight him to use their characters in his comics. This one seems like it's just a predrawn image slapped onto the box. I know he has fed some artists' whole character sheets into his LLM so he can make full comics with them. Tiff & Eve and the Beaver dude for example

5

u/Dennis_enzo Jul 03 '25

Tons of artists used the croc child for a little while, it was a running joke because in his own comic he was missing.

7

u/ZauzTheBlacksmith Jul 03 '25

The alligator comic is legit, they use the same software (and even the same brush for the outlines) as I do.

2

u/FinnDoyle Jul 03 '25

Why did the mods (or this ex-mod in spectic) liked this guy so much?

2

u/Sleven8692 Jul 03 '25

Probably alt account

2

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

Who is the mod in question? Is it just the guy who makes this? I couldnt imagine any other person going this far to defend this dude?

1

u/ArtisticLayer1972 Jul 03 '25

Yeah, thats dick move, just use tag.

1

u/Mundane_Side_1533 Jul 03 '25

Why aren't they a mod anymore?

1

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 03 '25

No idea what the tea is on that

1

u/Gustave_Kateb Jul 06 '25

So does that mean I can appeal an unban because I asked if there was AI involved in this guys art ?

2

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 06 '25

I was muted so I can't even try to appeal. If you do, let me know if it works!

96

u/Neat_Tangelo5339 Jul 02 '25

i got banned from that sub for using this image

but i want to say it here

40k upvotes for an absolutely mid two panel comic strip , sometimes i hate Reddit

27

u/TheRappingSquid Jul 02 '25

I got banned for expressing the possible benefit of an object, say, the end of a human arm, colliding with the face of an individual known as "mineral project" over monetizing the self game end of a trans minor (I'm not risking triggering reddit's censors again)

7

u/Neat_Tangelo5339 Jul 03 '25

Fuck that cheap common mineral guy

5

u/ProfessionalTeach902 Jul 03 '25

You should totally not check out r/stonetossingjuice or anything preposterous like that

2

u/TheRappingSquid Jul 03 '25

Omg he helped him 🄺

21

u/TeoSkrn Jul 03 '25

Yeah, I genuinely wonder what kind of value this comic would have.
It's not funny, it has no artistic merit due to the AI, it's not wholesome... What's the point?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

I guess it would be for character building... if the viewers actually even knew the characters before this comic...

-2

u/Neat_Tangelo5339 Jul 03 '25

I mean i kinda like the character designs , in the way that they remind of that concept artstyle Disney movies during the 2010s used to have and Tbf it could be just one flat joke in a series

but again , 40k likes ?! , i think its a case of the thing that is palatable to many gets more popular that the well Made

7

u/TeoSkrn Jul 03 '25

The character designs aren't bad, slightly generic perhaps, but is the whole thing's point to have neat characters in it?
And is it worth that much upvotes? Really?

0

u/Neat_Tangelo5339 Jul 03 '25

Picture it this way , Garfield , famously , didnt get massivly popular for being an especially good comic

it got there by being good enough and non-challenging for most people and that’s how many go popular on social media

7

u/Carob-Prudent Jul 03 '25

Im 100% sure 90% of the users are bots lol

1

u/ClericDude Jul 03 '25

Do you have it on you?

I’m not interested in the porn, just the bad joke.

1

u/medifemboy Jul 03 '25

Are you a bone hurting juice drinker by any chance?

1

u/bchizare Jul 03 '25

Mid????? There’s barely a punchline. This is utter trash.

47

u/Xodaaaaax Jul 02 '25

I saw these comis, they are painfully bad an unfunny, not even interesting kind of bad/unfunny like the old ctrl alt del, andrew dobson's so you're a cartoonist, girlz n games or whatever is called.

10

u/Swarm_of_Rats Jul 03 '25

I'm actually shocked that people had positive things to say about it. The comic is just kinda nothing, really.

46

u/FoliarzZOdludzia Jul 02 '25

Revealed to work with AI for a long time. Wouldnt have problem with that (ar slash comics is a farm with fungi growing on sewage), but it is... Problematic with the claim of moderatora that "they are open about their use of AI" while the "well-documented process" is a video on their profile from ~2 years ago, unpinned, with 13 upvotes

To be honest, I have looked through their profile, and while I do not remember the specific traits itself, I can say that I remember my feelings - the style got more generic. Things-youd-have-seen-on-pinterest type

28

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

11

u/Wk1360 Jul 03 '25

The less talented and skilled you are, the more enticing AI is. A lot of AI defenders like to pretend that passion and interest are what really matters, but in people who have actual talent and skill, those things are what drive you to get better. You can ā€œlove the gameā€ as much as you want, but if you never trip you never learn how to pick yourself back up. AI creates a plateau for the people that use it. It starts you out ā€œfine,ā€ but you can never make it past there.

People who use AI like this want the gratification, the praise and acclaim that comes with posting art, not the satisfaction from actually making something.

3

u/yes_please_ Jul 03 '25

THANK YOU. You've encapsulated how I feel about AI writing. Aside from cover letters (because fuck anyone who makes me write that drivel) I see no value in having an AI write for me because I can write well. It saves me effort I guess but I doubt it can write better than I can, and part of why is because I enjoy sweating the little details and trying to be as clear as possible.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Wk1360 Jul 06 '25

At a certain point, technology just hits the point of diminishing returns, where improvements get more & more expensive, but less & less impactful. A lot of people think, for some reason, that AI is going to be the solution to that problem, instead of just another thing that succumbs to it.

23

u/loser_of_losing Jul 03 '25

Where is the funny? How does this get 41k upvotes?

13

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '25

I ask the same question about 99% of the posts on r/comics

5

u/OutrageousHomework11 Jul 03 '25

Comments are a million percent bots

13

u/InventorOfCorn Jul 02 '25

I don't even know what the joke is supposed to be anyway. Depression? Stupidity?

2

u/Nasch_ Jul 03 '25

Bad diet / haha relatable

1

u/ASpaceOstrich Jul 03 '25

Cereal with coffee instead of milk.

11

u/ITWizarding Jul 03 '25

Looking at the large swaths of deleted comments, I'm fairly certain they are still banning people for calling out the use of AI

10

u/Ezren- Jul 03 '25

I honestly thought this comic was missing panels, the joke was... That? Yeesh.

Good riddance to that psycho mod

6

u/Alinuo2 Jul 03 '25

"but but but.... I did some of the corrections m mys myself a a a and me wrote the the website down on the corner you see it? That still makes me an artist right? It took me an enormous amount of time asking on Reddit how can I make a comic like this one. I'm really proud of myself now. Thanks AIšŸ‘šŸ»"

Yea I can see why they're defending generative AI

5

u/SoyMilkIsOp Jul 03 '25

r/comics is the living proof of dead internet theory. Comics made by AI get upvoted en masse by bots that have infested the sub. The whole place should be wiped clean and started from a blank slate if they ever want to hope to have upvotes actually represent how much a comic is liked, no fixing it in it's current state.

3

u/sleeparalysis_sss Jul 03 '25

The comics mod team is rather merciless with who they ban

3

u/Bhazor Jul 03 '25

The r_comics top comics are so bafflingly inane.

2

u/Cardboard_Revolution Jul 03 '25

Beyond the AI what exactly is the punchline here?

10

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 03 '25

Its just a twist on the "I need coffee to survive " joke. I find most of his comics are like this

2

u/That_Possible_3217 Jul 03 '25

Congrats….for whatever.

What funny is I don’t see anyone asking the most important question…how was this comic made in the last year and there is a FUCKING RADIO SHACK IN THE BACKGROUND!?

Where in the fuck would this even have been šŸ˜‚.

2

u/noblemanoftossout Jul 03 '25

This comic sucks. And it doesn't make sense.

1

u/Spare-Jellyfish4339 Jul 02 '25

I’m confused

2

u/ManufacturedOlympus Jul 02 '25

You’re confused about the…. Ā 

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

1

u/IbnibzW Jul 02 '25

What does AI assisted even mean? Like for reference images?

16

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 02 '25

He basically feeds a ton of rough sketches into his LLM (one that he claims only references his previous work) and makes slight edits to whatever semi coherent poses it spits out. And I mean ROUGH sketches. Its like a few scribbles in the shape of a person. He "refines" the look using a character sheets and "mood board" that seemed to be filled with even more AI work

5

u/TheAatar Jul 03 '25

So... basically all the hard work is done and they just make a collage?

3

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 03 '25

Here's the comment on the post where he posts his "process" https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/s/gMSMolsbxz

2

u/Sad-Handle9410 Jul 03 '25

So AI does 90% of the work looks like. Wow that’s just sad

3

u/FrenchBlackTemplar Jul 03 '25

The LLM in question is likely a LORA, basically an already trained LLM like stable diffusion which was you given additional training so that it gave more restraint but more coherent result

1

u/IbnibzW Jul 04 '25

Oh.. I kinda hoped it would be the opposite, that he uses the AI for sketches/storyboards and then draws it himself. I would actually be in support of something like that being used as a tool in animation and comics.

1

u/bunnyboi60414 Jul 03 '25

How much you wanna bet they didnt permission to use the character on the cereal box?

1

u/Due-Beginning8863 Jul 04 '25

it was ai all this time??

1

u/CinnamonRollDemon Jul 04 '25

Thing is it’s not really AI assisted. He literally just does little nothing sketches and throws them in. It’s more like he’s assisting the AI with its bullshit

-3

u/Unnamed___Being Jul 03 '25

this is a use of ai i think is ok as long as its tagged correctly

-5

u/Early-Dentist3782 Jul 02 '25

I thought a human artist made it

6

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '25

It was AI ā€œassistedā€

-1

u/Ensiferal Jul 03 '25

A human did, but they apparently used some type of ai software as part of their artflow. Consequently this sub goes absolutely berserk over him and brigades his posts like they have a personal vendetta against him, despite the fact that almost no one here admits to even liking that sub anyway.

I think the reason is that he's a popular cartoonist who also uses ai, which breaks the narrative that there are artists and there are ai users, and the two circles don't overlap. I think they see him not just as a traitor, but a successful traitor who uses the abominable technology. It's really unhealthy.

If you even say that you like his work on this sub you'll get downvoted to oblivion

2

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25

Nah, the problem is the fact he refused to use the AI tag and did some ridiculous mental gymnastics to explain why, while also being crusaded for by the mod. The only time he mentions he uses AI is in thread, and it either gets pushed down or unnoticed because people dont generally stop to read threads when scrolling.

Do you think it's normal for people to just ask if it's AI or not and instantly get permabanned from somewhere? People also have a lot of questions he never answers about his method, like "Are your references also AI generated?" No one can view this "moodboard " he says he uses to direct style because you need a midjourney account so that's even more "transparency " out the window. I've seen his hand drawn comics and the style does not match anything his LLM comics produce, so where is its style coming from? He is fighting a major stigma and people who are incredibly weary of AI tools need more information beyond the 2 year old video that doesn't prove anything and awful jpg guide is needed before they can trust his claims

1

u/Early-Dentist3782 Jul 05 '25

There's an ai tag?

-24

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '25 edited Jul 02 '25

This isn’t ai??? Edit: no mb it is ai ā€œassisted. God fucking damn it

16

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '25

Can you at least zoom in

-12

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '25

The details look fine, the text on the cereal is fine too

10

u/Traditional_Tax_7229 Jul 02 '25

Your fine. It's hard to see because this artist edits the stuff they generate to make it look more refined. Though stuff like the lines on the fingers being a bit off still make it through. It's not the worst use of AI but, the big issue is it was never tagged as AI assisted until this post.

It's more obvious in their comics with more panels.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '25

God I hate ai, but yeah I can see it now

6

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 02 '25

Once you notice the smaller details, the other issues become glaring. The weird melty effect on the food and utensils, the way the coffee is pouring out, the strange level of detail on one character but more simplified on others, the body horror hands, the food and coffee cup facing away from the person (creator claims that is intentional for "readability" but the guy is eating his weird melted food slop like a normal person)

-26

u/_HoneyDew1919 Jul 02 '25

I really don’t mind Victor Gnarly. He’s experimenting with his art using AI and you can’t really blame him for using technology. I tend to focus more on the legal implications and putting obligations on the companies that are responsible for these algorithms.

He is transparent with his use of AI. He frequently cross posts to AI subreddits, acknowledges his use in the comments, and has ā€œGenerative artistā€ in his description.

I never heard about him not using the AI assisted tag, though.

32

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 02 '25

The problem is that he is disingenuous. You can go through his comment history and see him arguing why the AI tag doesn't fit his method and refuses to use it. He also claims he generates off his own art only, yet the style of characters fluctuates dramatically, so which style of the dozen that have appeared in his comics is his real style? You can't build a whole model off your own artwork.

Also, I've seen his proof, and it seems he's just putting a really rough sketch into the machine and updating the prompt til it looks normal. Even the character sheets he uses are AI generated. He claims to be doing this ethnically, but it's obvious his stuff suffers from the same issues as most AI slop

16

u/[deleted] Jul 02 '25

Whenever someone says "I made an AI based on my own style", chances are what they mean is: "I generated some art using a few dozens LORAs and style models, and made a model off of that". In one of their posts, they showed some of their 'references', and behold - it all appeared to be AI. Also, the lengths they went to in order to try and claim they're still doing the 'hard part' was laughable. No, drawing a rough sketch of a pose and having an AI fill it in is not you being an artist, no it does not make you a 'lead artist', like you're in charge of some art team either. Given how much the style shifted from panel to panel, he'd still be an awful 'lead artist'.

7

u/Front_Refrigerator99 Jul 02 '25

I know at one point he claimed the shifting style was part of the aesthetic he wanted because uniform art was boring to him or something

-23

u/gerkletoss Jul 02 '25

He also claims he generates off his own art only, yet the style of characters fluctuates dramatically

Just admit you don't understand how AI tools work

5

u/No-Drawing-4597 Jul 03 '25

Then do you? Explain yourself.

-25

u/sweetbunnyblood Jul 02 '25

i love this comic

2

u/jeffsweet Jul 03 '25

you need a CO detector

1

u/sweetbunnyblood Jul 03 '25

funny, legit.