Yikes! Did season 1 episode 6 use AI-generated art?

[Michael]

I think you can get models to put out something that resembles the IDW style anyway.

It never occurred to me to consider it was AI though because I assumed it was an actual tie in.

Since we are talking about AI tells, maybe this can be a teachable moment for all of us? Here’s the obvious AI tells I can see in this image:

• character melding into a jumbled mess in the background
• some features on the uniform of the character in the front are not symmetric on both sides, i.e. the white cuff element
• the left iris on the character in the front is not round
• the legs of the characters in green uniforms disappearing or shrinking into a mangled mess
• the facial features of the background characters being grotesque grimaces
• there’s lines that just stop and then the AI doesn’t know how to color the area, like when you look at the glass frame (?) in the upper right-hand corner of the image

I’m sure there’s more, but these are the ones I’m seeing right away.

 

[tenmei]

The joy of the UK banning certain image holders

 

[Mudd]

I notice that Our Hero's hands are better rendered than most human artists/inkers manage.

The mismatched cuffs look to me like she's supposed to have some tech attached on her left wrist. Her eyes look to me to be "within range" for comic art in this style. Some pencillers render faces in more detail than a given inker can use. Others provide not much more than a sketch.

It occurs to me that a way to create this kind of prop quickly to a high degree of quality using AI assisance would be to generate the "pencil art " using AI and then have a staff artist ink and color using something like Photoshop on a Wacom tablet.

 

[Mudd]

Since we are talking about AI tells, maybe this can be a teachable moment for all of us? Here’s the obvious AI tells I can see in this image:

• character melding into a jumbled mess in the background
• some features on the uniform of the character in the front are not symmetric on both sides, i.e. the white cuff element
• the left iris on the character in the front is not round
• the legs of the characters in green uniforms disappearing or shrinking into a mangled mess
• the facial features of the background characters being grotesque grimaces
• there’s lines that just stop and then the AI doesn’t know how to color the area, like when you look at the glass frame (?) in the upper right-hand corner of the image

I’m sure there’s more, but these are the ones I’m seeing right away.

At least some of this could also be down to the skill of a human inker and what their deadlines are.

If you haven't, hang around comics fan boards and watch them kvetch about their personal artistic betes noir.

 

[Tosk]

• character melding into a jumbled mess in the background
• some features on the uniform of the character in the front are not symmetric on both sides, i.e. the white cuff element
• the left iris on the character in the front is not round
• the legs of the characters in green uniforms disappearing or shrinking into a mangled mess
• the facial features of the background characters being grotesque grimaces
• there’s lines that just stop and then the AI doesn’t know how to color the area, like when you look at the glass frame (?) in the upper right-hand corner of the image

The front character seemingly is missing a finger on their right hand.

 

[Set Harth]

The front character seemingly is missing a finger on their right hand.

Space is dangerous, accidents happen.

 

[Mudd]

The front character seemingly is missing a finger on their right hand.

Nah; her pinky wouldn't necessarily be visible at that angle. I've discovered this by posing commercial CG models.

One could argue that the relative lengths of the fingers visible on that hand are not right, but again this is to be expected of human-created comic art so it's not a tell.

 

[Mudd]

I'd say that the "tell" in Firehawk's image would be, if anything, the far background characters on the left that Michael cited. The "ink strokes" are too broken and random for an artist trying to make sense of a sketch.

 

[Mudd]

You want AI sci-fi stuff?* Here:

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Picking out AI by looking for mistakes in "artistic" imagery is as likely as not to mislead now because skeptics look for points of comparison with the best human art in a field rather than what's representative. Especially in commercial art produced on demand, quality and the extent of simplification and shortcutting is up to the skill level and caring of the individual. The bar for editorial acceptability in comic illustration, specifically, is low enough to induce perennial teeth-gnashing on the parts of dedicated comics fans and always has been.

"I don't get why [comic company] keeps giving this guy work. This issue is laughably hideous."

Distinguishing photographic versus photorealistic AI is still easier, somewhat because of an uncanny valley effect but largely because prompters love to generate things we know don't exist and would be too expensive for a "traditional" effects artist to create in a one-person operation:

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*Rhetorical question, awright?

 

[Michael]

The joy of the UK banning certain image holders

Reuploading it for UK posters to check out …

The front character seemingly is missing a finger on their right hand.

Why would all fingers be visible from that angle, though? No, I think the hands are actually surprisingly good. Not perfect, mind you. There‘s a weird spot on that one finger on her right hand. And on her left the AI seemingly couldn‘t decide whether to render the element behind the hand as a thumb or as part of the uniform. But as far as AI generated drawings of hands go, these are not too bad.

 

[firehawk12]

Nice. What's your prompt and model, if you don't mind the question.

I've gotten some good output from generative AI, but it takes more guidance and iterations than I put into my example. Or blind luck.

I just used the free Ideogram and told it to "create a picture of an officer on the bridge of the starship Enterprise in an IDW comics style". I have no idea if it understands what IDW is though. lol

And yeah the background details are a total mess. lol

 

[Tosk]

Why would all fingers be visible from that angle, though?

That's why I said 'seemingly'.

 

[Nerys Myk]

View attachment 52135

Zippers???? Are you mad. sir!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Michael]

That's why I said 'seemingly'.

Right. But still, why would it even “seem” like a finger is missing? Just because we‘re not seeing it? By that same logic her right ear is seemingly missing. I would just not really expect the finger to be visible and if this were an illustration that I was working on I probably wouldn‘t have shown it either, to be honest.

 

[Mudd]

Right. But still, why would it even “seem” like a finger is missing? Just because we‘re not seeing it? By that same logic her right ear is seemingly missing. I would just not really expect the finger to be visible and if this were an illustration that I was working on I probably wouldn‘t have shown it either, to be honest.

Exactly.

If people were not already primed to be suspicious of that image, nothing about the foreground figure would ring alarms - not if you read lots of comics, anyway.

But the rub of it is, we're increasingly suspicious of all images we encounter online. People are misidentifying unaltered photos that were uploaded ten years or more ago as "AI slop."

 

[Tosk]

Right. But still, why would it even “seem” like a finger is missing? Just because we‘re not seeing it? By that same logic her right ear is seemingly missing. I would just not really expect the finger to be visible and if this were an illustration that I was working on I probably wouldn‘t have shown it either, to be honest.

We're not trying to spot an Ai picture here, we're just noting the things that tend to crop up in them that appear here. Can the finger be behind the others? Absolutely. Would I sometimes expect the last finger to be curled further in than the ones before it? Also yeah.

Am I trying hard to ding this slop for something that can be explained away? Not really. Just noting that it's there. I don't find that hand to look particularly natural. The fingernails stay a little too "camera front" for my taste.

Why does this post have so many questions in it? And there's another one, what's wrong with me?

 

[Donald G]

The front character seemingly is missing a finger on their right hand.

In 1971, during Marvel's Kree-Skrull War storyline in the Avengers, on the last page of Avengers #96, there is a large panel of Rick Jones plunging through the Negative Zone with a weirdly drawn outstretched hand. As published, that weirdly drawn hand has five fingers. It did not have five fingers when very influential and famous comics artist Neal Adams turned in the art for that issue. You see, very famous and influential comics artist Neal Adams had given poor Rick Jones SIX beautifully drawn fingers on that outstretched hand. Some poor editorial staffer had to decide which of Rick's extraneous digits to remove before publication.

In my fifty plus years of reading comics, I've seen a lot of panel to panel inconsistencies in professionally published comics. The mid-nineties were rife with the kind of things that would be regarded as tells in this thread of AI use.

Maybe AI was used for this; maybe it wasn't. I am, however, wary of claims of surefire tells when it comes to AI use.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Wasn't Reed Richard's foot once drawn as a hand?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Wasn't Reed Richard's foot once drawn as a hand?

It's Reed, anything can be a hand if he wants.

 

[Tosk]

In my fifty plus years of reading comics, I've seen a lot of panel to panel inconsistencies in professionally published comics.

Yes, I agree. No one anywhere is claiming that human-made comics are somehow free from silly errors.

Maybe AI was used for this; maybe it wasn't. I am, however, wary of claims of surefire tells when it comes to AI use.

It was. @firehawk12 generated it and posted it. I was not "spotting suspected Ai", I was tagging a potential slop marker.