News Discussing Guidelines for AI-Generated Fan Art

[Disposable_Ensign]

I don't know where to put this but here, so here goes.

I'd like to propose that any and all AI generated images on this fan art forum, be clearly labeled. I haven't really seen it as a problem yet, it just seems like a good way to avoid any problems, and make it more apparent who poured lots of work into the art, and what's just a cool little tidbit to look at.

 

[Michael]

I'd like to propose that any and all AI generated images on this fan art forum, be clearly labeled. I haven't really seen it as a problem yet, it just seems like a good way to avoid any problems, and make it more apparent who poured lots of work into the art, and what's just a cool little tidbit to look at.

Over the last few months I've been given this some thought as well and I think that might be a sensible approach. As you are saying, it hasn’t really been a problem in the forum so far, because people have been open about their use of AI when they post generated art. But I think codifying it as a guideline makes sense. I’ve seen other art platforms go that route and I don’t see why that wouldn’t work here. I suppose this would be similar to the already existing guideline about giving proper credit to people whose work you are including in yours.

I would be interested in hearing others’ opinions on this, because I wouldn’t just want to unilaterally force this guideline on everyone.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

How about any AI art must be shared in a thread whose title is tagged with "AI"? (much as a game thread has the prefix "Game", or a contest thread, the prefix "Contest".)

 

[Michael]

How about any AI art must be shared in a thread whose title is tagged with "AI"? (much as a game thread has the prefix "Game", or a contest thread, the prefix "Contest".)

The problem with that approach is twofold: We would have to make changes to the board software to include the new tag (not impossible, but a hassle). But also, more importantly, if we were doing it that way it would add confusion when you have a thread where someone posts traditional, human-made art alongside AI generated works. A blanked AI tag to a thread would suggest everything in that thread is AI, when that would presumably not always be the case.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

That would be going forward for all-AI thread. Threads with AI in addition to non-AI works would have something like a spoiler tag warning of AI.​

 

[Michael]

I personally feel like this would overcomplicate things. In general artist here seem to be perfectly capable of giving proper credit to elements in their works that they’ve take from somewhere or someone else, either on the image itself or in the accompanying text of the posted work. So I think what makes the most sense to me would just be to ask people to also denote when the work they are posting is in some way AI generated. Which is, again, what most people here seem to be fine doing anyway.

Do you feel the AI generated nature of a work should be acknowledged more prominently, i.e. almost like a “warning” before you even see the image? At least that’s what your proposals sound like to me. And I personally don’t feel we need to treat them like that. But as I said, I’d be glad to listen to more perspectives on this.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I was just trying to think of a method of tagging such things that would involve a standard thing, rather than everybody doing it however they want. Not so much a warning as an easily applicable site function.

 

[Michael]

I think it makes sense to give this topic a dedicated thread to garner more visibility.

This got started by a post @Disposable_Ensign made in another thread:

I don't know where to put this but here, so here goes.

I'd like to propose that any and all AI generated images on this fan art forum, be clearly labeled. I haven't really seen it as a problem yet, it just seems like a good way to avoid any problems, and make it more apparent who poured lots of work into the art, and what's just a cool little tidbit to look at.

 

[David cgc]

One point is that AI tools can be used as an element in a larger piece. Granted, the first thing anyone thinks of is, you know, somebody types into Midjourney or Stable Diffusion "A photo of Spock surfing at Teahupo'o in the style of Ansel Adams" and getting a picture out of it, but what if I use a style transfer tool to make a texture map for a planet or nebula from a rough sketch, or use Photoshops Generative Fill tools to expand the borders of an image or paint something out of a background? Does that need to be disclosed or called out? We're an established, tight-knit community, so I don't think it's likely, but I'd rather avoid courting posters looking at some picture that looks a little airbrushed and crying out that they saw Goody Proctor consorting with a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

 

[blssdwlf]

One point is that AI tools can be used as an element in a larger piece. Granted, the first thing anyone thinks of is, you know, somebody types into Midjourney or Stable Diffusion "A photo of Spock surfing at Teahupo'o in the style of Ansel Adams" and getting a picture out of it, but what if I use a style transfer tool to make a texture map for a planet or nebula from a rough sketch, or use Photoshops Generative Fill tools to expand the borders of an image or paint something out of a background? Does that need to be disclosed or called out? We're an established, tight-knit community, so I don't think it's likely, but I'd rather avoid courting posters looking at some picture that looks a little airbrushed and crying out that they saw Goody Proctor consorting with a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

Perhaps we call out the tools used and note the addition of any AI used? So instead of "Blender+Photoshop" you add in "Blender+Photoshop with GenAI" if you used the generative fill AI?

 

[Michael]

One point is that AI tools can be used as an element in a larger piece. Granted, the first thing anyone thinks of is, you know, somebody types into Midjourney or Stable Diffusion "A photo of Spock surfing at Teahupo'o in the style of Ansel Adams" and getting a picture out of it, but what if I use a style transfer tool to make a texture map for a planet or nebula from a rough sketch, or use Photoshops Generative Fill tools to expand the borders of an image or paint something out of a background? Does that need to be disclosed or called out? We're an established, tight-knit community, so I don't think it's likely, but I'd rather avoid courting posters looking at some picture that looks a little airbrushed and crying out that they saw Goody Proctor consorting with a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

I believe those are some good thoughts. Personally I would never want to be too strict or picky about this stuff. I’m less bothered by someone using something generated as a small part of their piece, as long as the overall thing is still made by a person. And I think it’s totally cool if an artist lists all the tools they used to create a piece and I personally love reading that stuff, but at end of the day I think this should be at every artist’s own discretion. The thing that is important to me is knowing whether someone actually created something on their own as opposed to letting a tool create it for them.

 

[Spaceship Jo]

My feeling, as a pretty casual member and rare contributor to this site, is that if folks feel that they have actually created something, there's no need to tag it or denote it as AI assisted because they used some generative fill or whatever, whereas if they simply typed a prompt, they know perfectly well that they did not create the piece.

It's not really (it is, but in this context, for these purposes) all that different from commissioning an artist to do a piece for you: if I hired Sean to do a new ship design for me, I dang well better credit Sean.

If I use AI to do a new ship design for me, I better at the very least credit the AI, which is to say not credit myself, because the actual credit is too much of a can of worms, but the point is that it is not by an artist, and certainly not by me, whereas an assist with some element from some LLM still is my work.

Which is a long way of saying the rules dictating credit here are already sufficient for these purposes.

 

[Firebird]

I'm not sure if it's something that's possible with the BBS' software, but apps like Pixiv and DeviantArt have a field where the poster can check yes or no for "AI-generated image." That would automatically apply a tag to the thread. Reddit also has the ability for a number of different tags you can apply to a post.

As others have noted upthread, folks around here are pretty honest about tagging AI imagery, which I appreciate. I personally don't browse any of the threads containing AI art if it's in the title.