AI Art and the Forum/Wiki

[NatalieBayer]

Hello everyone!

As many of you have no doubt noticed, the topic of AI Art is something of a hot-button topic on the internet at the moment, and this forum is no different. The admin team are currently in the process of discussing the validity of allowing or disallowing AI Art to be posted here.

While we encourage you all to form your own opinions and discuss them, we want you to remain civil and respectful in your discourse.

After discussing the topic with the Admin Team we have decided to DISALLOW AI art on the wiki and the Forums. This is primarily due to the inability to know that the actual art used to generate it was scraped from an ethical source. Additionally it becomes very easy to generate a lot of art in a very short amount of time and we want to prevent flooding of topics.

These rules will also apply to manips using an AI image as it's base, or as part of the process, mostly for the same reasons as before. We want our art to be 100% hand made.

Thanks everyone, and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact anyone on the Admin Team.

[tully]

I appreciate the thoughtful approach. Thank you.

[CheeseMaker]

NGL, I find the whole debacle ironic considering we are an ASFR group that focused on liking AI and Robots

[tully]

NGL, I find the whole debacle ironic considering we are an ASFR group that focused on liking AI and Robots

I know exactly what you mean. However, I find this approach prudent, especially as most users don't know or understand where much of the source material is being gathered from.

But yeah, it's kind of odd, eh?

[Lithorien]

Thank you for disallowing AI image generated material.

[Kube²]

I understand why, i'm not very happy with it.
and I find it a bit hypocritical too

AI art is as much theft as the manipulated images whose original photographer is never credited.
and I says that as a photo maniper that never credits original material.

Its never been a big problem before. Is it one now ?

AI art could also be inspiring for other artist. Is maniped/fixed AI art is forbidden too ? where is the limit ?

I think total interdiction is not practical in the long run.

[zerodin]

Thanks for banning that junk. Now if only the major art sites would follow suit.

[NatalieBayer]

I understand why, i'm not very happy with it.
and I find it a bit hypocritical too

AI art is as much theft as the manipulated images whose original photographer is never credited.
and I says that as a photo maniper that never credits original material.

Its never been a big problem before. Is it one now ?

AI art could also be inspiring for other artist. Is maniped/fixed AI art is forbidden too ? where is the limit ?

I think total interdiction is not practical in the long run.

1. Yes, AI art, even art that has been manippes or edited is still disallowed.

2. We made this choice because if we didn't, we would have to thoroughly inspect every post and piece of art that was put up to make sure that it wasn't AI generated, or if it was that a significant enough amount of work went into an edit.

At the end of the day it was simply too much work to try and fairly moderate, so, we made the choice to simply disallow it across the board.

[Extyr]

2. We made this choice because if we didn't, we would have to thoroughly inspect every post and piece of art that was put up to make sure that it wasn't AI generated, or if it was that a significant enough amount of work went into an edit.

At the end of the day it was simply too much work to try and fairly moderate, so, we made the choice to simply disallow it across the board.

That doesn't make sense to me. You'll still have to inspect each picture to see if it was AI generated. The lazy approach here is "everything goes".

[Kube²]

2. We made this choice because if we didn't, we would have to thoroughly inspect every post and piece of art that was put up to make sure that it wasn't AI generated, or if it was that a significant enough amount of work went into an edit.

At the end of the day it was simply too much work to try and fairly moderate, so, we made the choice to simply disallow it across the board.

That doesn't make sense to me. You'll still have to inspect each picture to see if it was AI generated. The lazy approach here is "everything goes".

yup, exactly what I think too, total interdiction is not practical.

I think the only practical approach is "everything allowed unless there is abuse" (for instance, low qualy manip spam or obvious underage materials)

[Kube²]

also there some other aspects that I would like to highlight

My deepfake and upscaled stills (you can see some of them here : https://www.fembotcentral.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15863) are AI generated are they forbidden too ? I don't share most of my work anyway so its not very annoying for me, but i still thinks its a little sad for the community.

Also take a look at the 50 last upload manip on the wiki, in my opinion the best stuff this week is from Azure, and all of it is AI generated. The post from azure on the forum is also one of the most liked this month. So clearly all AI art is not shit or crap, its only depend on how its done (and who is doing it) and most of the community is enjoying it when its done properly.

[ProchazkaJBG]

I have no skin in the game either way, but I really don't understand the whole problem with AI art here. It seems to be almost inventing an issue, unless there is something that happened here I am missing.

[azure]

does it make any difference if the AI arts are not loaded into fembotwiki, and use external links in fembotcentral,like postimg etc. banning the topic completely is bit extreme...

[toysher]

It is a huge contradiction to reject artificial intelligence-made pictures and photos in places where AI characters are gathered because they like artificial intelligence.

This could now pay the price of rejecting the trend of the times.

[Spaz]

The problem is, that for now, the AI generated stuff is essentially non-intelligent and, instead of creating completely unique artwork is instead utilizing bits and pieces of others works. I don't know about you, but I call that cheating, and to the artists whose works are being used, they call it stealing.

[NatalieBayer]

Spaz really hit the nail on the head. The issue here is ethics. AI art, no matter where it is coming from, is impossible to ethically source. All of the images it stitches together comes from a massive database that was made using other artists work without thier permission.

I know it's really easy to look at it and go "but it looks pretty good, what's the harm if no one is selling the art"

First, people absolutely are, not here as far as I know, but still. Second, it was made using someone else's hard work without their permission in a way that they have absolutely no control over, and once that was revealed, many artists out there specifically asked NOT to have their art scraped...but it was too late.

So AI Art remains something that, ethically, is wrong. Plane and simple.

[toysher]

It seems that AI does not understand how to draw pictures at all.

Of course I will follow the rules of the forum, but I would still like to say that this choice is wrong.

[ProchazkaJBG]

Spaz really hit the nail on the head. The issue here is ethics. AI art, no matter where it is coming from, is impossible to ethically source. All of the images it stitches together comes from a massive database that was made using other artists work without thier permission.

I know it's really easy to look at it and go "but it looks pretty good, what's the harm if no one is selling the art"

First, people absolutely are, not here as far as I know, but still. Second, it was made using someone else's hard work without their permission in a way that they have absolutely no control over, and once that was revealed, many artists out there specifically asked NOT to have their art scraped...but it was too late.

So AI Art remains something that, ethically, is wrong. Plane and simple.

So are you going to ban all manips unless they are proven to come from an 'ethical source' (whatever that means)?

[ProchazkaJBG]

The problem is, that for now, the AI generated stuff is essentially non-intelligent and, instead of creating completely unique artwork is instead utilizing bits and pieces of others works. I don't know about you, but I call that cheating, and to the artists whose works are being used, they call it stealing.

So anyone who is inspired by and incorporates elements of others' works should be banned as well, no?

[ProchazkaJBG]

Let's be real, this is about these AI art programs becoming more and more sophisticated, which eliminates the need for actual artists (and writers), of which there are a lot of here. This "ethical sourcing" stuff is just buzzwords that, if applied to this kind of content, must be applied to all others here as well (if you want to run a fair system), which we all know would end in the deletion of a high percentage of manips and other art on here and FBW

[NatalieBayer]

I'm just going to go ahead and put this to rest.

We, the staff, feel that banning AI art and manips based on AI art, is the correct course of action. I'm going to lock this topic since it IS an announcement and not a thread for debate. If you would like to create such a topic, I'll direct you to the discussion section where you are welcome to continue this debate.

Regardless, we all hope you remain civil on this topic since it is (clearly) a bit of a hot button subject.