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

[Dar70]

In 3 short years Ai has creeped into everything. I found that comic odd looking as well. First thought was Ai. Sadly we are going to see this more and more with each passing year and eventually it's gonna turn the entertainment business and everything else creative on its head. Artists and non artists alike will be asking AI to create them something. It's kinda sad. I have already stopped looking at book series published after 2022. I see authors now releasing 2 or 3 books per year. I have no doubt Ai is doing the heavy writing now.... ....Life is getting less interesting my friends. It's just feeling more and more artificial as the years go by......

 

[Donald G]

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

Yes, indeed, in a Rich Buckler drawn issue, IIRC.

 

[CT_Phipps]

I think it's a question to not make any assumptions about because the nature of AI art is it's primarily ripped from other sources and combined together.

 

[Fateor]

And what also personally rubs me the wrong way as an artist working as a graphic designer for 15 years is how people seem to have this knee-jerk reaction that something must be AI, with the evidence often merely amounting to “I don’t think it looks perfect”. We’ve reached a point where something looking off in an illustration automatically lets people assume it’s AI, when humans were fully capable of producing subpar art for literally thousands of years. It’s so disheartening as a creative person to see genuinely good creative work and artists being subjected to irrational witch hunts in comments sections, just because suddenly everything must be “AI slop”.

It's not really "irrational" though.

Because a bunch of companies and "artists" have been caught trying to pass "AI slop" off as human produced work.

 

[Mudd]

It's not really "irrational" though.

The behavior Michael describes is irrational.

 

[Mudd]

Comic books make an intriguing microcosm for this. "Swipes" are a long-time, documented practice among comic artists. It's nearly an industry inside joke.

As Wally Wood put it, "Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up."

Or, as Picasso was alleged to have said in regard to prehistoric art, “In 15,000 years we have invented nothing!”

Models are trained using existing imagery. They don't store those images in memory and pick out parts of them to assemble into another image, like a collage.

Research Guides: Artificial Intelligence and Images: How AI creates images

Curious about AI & Images and how they are created? Or the ethical issues surrounding this? Here are some links and things to think about.

guides.csbsju.edu

 

[Fateor]

Models are trained using existing imagery. They don't store those images in memory and pick out parts of them to assemble into another image, like a collage.

Disproven recently, they do in fact copy and store things.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

In 3 short years Ai has creeped into everything. I found that comic odd looking as well. First thought was Ai. Sadly we are going to see this more and more with each passing year and eventually it's gonna turn the entertainment business and everything else creative on its head. Artists and non artists alike will be asking AI to create them something. It's kinda sad. I have already stopped looking at book series published after 2022. I see authors now releasing 2 or 3 books per year. I have no doubt Ai is doing the heavy writing now.... ....Life is getting less interesting my friends. It's just feeling more and more artificial as the years go by......

I'm catching AI errors in USN Navy history books from publishers now, such as implying that USS Atlanta (CL-51) underwent combat at the Battle of Midway while escorting the carrier Hornet. Trust me, none of Hiryu's aircraft attacked Task Force 16. Yes, she earned a battle star for being at Midway, but her guns fired not a shot in anger.

Fuck AI

 

[F. King Daniel]

The inconsistent uniform collars were a dead giveaway just watching on TV, let alone seeing the stills. It's a shame when they literally have a comics division that would be able to bang something out for them.

I guess the days of Logan, where artists proudly show off their comic book pages made for the movie, are long gone.

 

[Argosy]

Anyone who’s in an industry that requires creative output can probably attest to the fact that Ai is everywhere. Not wholesale usage because of the legal ‘ambiguities’ (if you can call it that) which surround it, but it’s there, championed by management types.

A huge side effect, is the shortening of deadlines. One scenario for this is that someone was given an impossibly short amount of time to get this comic done, making Ai the only means of meeting the deadline. The Ai’s that yield the best results are often not copyrightable, so the copyright of the derivative work is unclear. This would force them to use one of the earlier Ai models where the output is copyright to the user (supposedly). Once they have that work, there’s nothing to stop them from taking it into Photoshop and tidying up the worst of the hallucinations. Job done in a fraction of the time, greasy management happy, artist gets to put food on the table for one more day…

 

[Mudd]

The development of AI will have continue to cut across issues of legality, economics, philosophy and ethics. Those that can be resolved probably will not be on terms that will make olds - speaking for myself - comfortable.

 

[Mudd]

"To Err is Human; To Really Foul Things Up Requires a Computer" - William E. Vaughn? circa 1969

 

[Roald]

I for one am more intrigued by the possibilities of AI than I am scared or bothered by it. If the comic book was indeed AI art, it wouldn't bother me a whole lot. It served its purpose, and it was such a small factor of the episode...

 

[Argosy]

It might seem like a small thing, but that's a job someone could have done. Maybe it would have been experience for an intern, something to put in their portfolio. Instead of getting paid for several days work, someone might get paid for half a day. Maybe they don't hire that extra concept artist because one artist can do the work of two+

If humanity could really hold to the principles depicted in Trek then yeah, it might be a cool thing, but surprise, it's just letting the rich get richer. 2D, 3D, Animation, Music, Film, it's everywhere and frankly anyone who uses a computer in their day to day is going to get bitten by this in the end. Like a weed, it might seem small, but the roots go a lot deeper.

 

[Mudd]

The number of "jobs someone could have done" that have been foreclosed since the 19th century by the rise of new technologies are myriad.

The economic issues with AI are the ones that will have the most drastic impact on the way most people live, and at the same time are the ones that are most unlikely to be effectively addressed and circumvented or blunted. That is vexing.

 

[Christopher]

It might seem like a small thing, but that's a job someone could have done. Maybe it would have been experience for an intern, something to put in their portfolio. Instead of getting paid for several days work, someone might get paid for half a day. Maybe they don't hire that extra concept artist because one artist can do the work of two+

All true. Not to mention that so-called "AIs" (LLMs and LMMs, which are not actual AI at all) are usually trained on plagiarized work, and they're horrible for the environment with their waste heat and water demands, and the companies pouring huge amounts of electricity into their data centers are passing the expense onto consumers and raising our electric bills. So basically everything about them is too unethical to justify any potential benefits, at least not until there are some massive reforms to deal with those problems.

 

[Dar70]

The inconsistent uniform collars were a dead giveaway just watching on TV, let alone seeing the stills. It's a shame when they literally have a comics division that would be able to bang something out for them.

I guess the days of Logan, where artists proudly show off their comic book pages made for the movie, are long gone.

Haha. The weird thing is you can see that AI pulled a lot of images that looked similar to Kirk and Spock. Just changed some facial feature like Spock's ears etc..

 

[Rahul]

I hate the word "AI slop" gut everything AI. It's a tool. It's going to be used. It feels like the days where artists were revolting against photoshop, or engineers against excel, because of the immoral way it takes away jobs.

AI is everywhere already. The "not being sloppy" part is just about not getting caught.
That beautiful space nebula in the background? Are you 100% sure it was created by a human? Could also be AI. Or it was created "old school" with cgi & Photoshop. In the end it's just a texture & some foreground cloud effects. Hell AI is now already integrated into photoshop.
In the end AI is just the must efficient way for many things, that's why no matter the personal opinion, it will be or already is standard practice.

What made this comic "sloppy" is that 1) It's so clearly the standard "too clean" AI art style of a thousand boomer Facebook memes, 2) it doesn't fit with the plot - thr uniforms and characters (WHY IS KIRK & SULU THERE??).

 

[Dar70]

I hate the word "AI slop" gut everything AI. It's a tool. It's going to be used. It feels like the days where artists were revolting against photoshop, or engineers against excel, because of the immoral way it takes away jobs.

AI is everywhere already. The "not being sloppy" part is just about not getting caught.
That beautiful space nebula in the background? Are you 100% sure it was created by a human? Could also be AI. Or it was created "old school" with cgi & Photoshop. In the end it's just a texture & some foreground cloud effects. Hell AI is now already integrated into photoshop.
In the end AI is just the must efficient way for many things, that's why no matter the personal opinion, it will be or already is standard practice.

What made this comic "sloppy" is that 1) It's so clearly the standard "too clean" AI art style of a thousand boomer Facebook memes, 2) it doesn't fit with the plot - thr uniforms and characters (WHY IS KIRK & SULU THERE??).

I like the term Ai Slop. I use it for the crappy Ai. You are right. Ai is a tool. But the thing is it will eventually get to a point where much creativity will come solely from Ai. I don't think I want any part of say a book series that is totally written by Ai. With just the premise coming from a person's mind. We shall see where it all ends up. I think Star Trek prediction that TV programs will cease to exist may come true.

 

[Rahul]

I love how the AI can't decide if the uniforms should have these visible iconic sewing lines around the shoulder & chest, or not, and then just makes them part of the cloth folding...

Mixing up art styles in McCoys face (but consistent in colours & uniforms):

Sun in the foreground:

However it's also clearly touched up by a human - e.g. someone inserted the actual model of the myazaki ship into the title & other slides: