So, before you all start rushing in and posting comments, I would like to ask that you all be patient with me, read the thread to the very end and then discuss the topic.

Thank you.

Now I know a lot of people, especially artists (and understandably so) are concerned about AI art stealing artwork and putting artists out of a job and I can understand that.

At the same time I can see how AI art might be useful for the less artistic inclined (or those that are really busy) to help visualize the idea they have in their brain... Which they could then use as a reference when requesting/commissioning for official artwork.

Allow me to explain.

Let's say mister... Bob has an idea for a character, but they are bad at art and maybe they have difficulty describing the character to the artist. So, Bob uses an AI to create an image of the character they imagine. Now instead of jumping around and acting like this is their artwork (or masterpiece), they talk to the artist, present the AI image of the character and commission the artist to create a character sheet of the character (maybe mentioning a few additional tweaks as well) in the artist's own style.

• Is this something that would be acceptable?
• Additionally if you were an artist and someone (like Bob) came and asked for a commission, using an AI image only as a means of presenting the character concept to you, would you do the commission, or would you turn them down?

After all in this example, Bob isn't using AI to bypass the creative process, he is merely using it to conceptualize what he wants for the artist.

This was just something that popped up in my head while I was at work and figured that I would just throw it out there.

Have a wonderful day.

*Quietly waits for all of Tartarus to break loose. Feeling a sense of impending doom...*

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Now instead of jumping around and acting like this is their artwork (or masterpiece), they talk to the artist, present the AI image of the character and commission the artist to create a character sheet of the character (maybe mentioning a few additional tweaks as well) in the artist's own style.

• Is this something that would be acceptable?
• Additionally if you were an artist and someone (like Bob) came and asked for a commission, using an AI image only as a means of presenting the character concept to you, would you do the commission, or would you turn them down?

I've done this before with one artist on here on the basis of commissioning them to do a reference sheet for an OC of mine. I treat the AI images as concept designs where the artist understands what I'm trying to propose to them. You mention the human artist doing some tweaks at the wishes of the commissioner, where you make the character look a lot different from what they are originally shown in the image.

I have excellent example of this.

Here's is what my AI pony looked like.

AI image of Kyra Storm:

Source: NovelAI

Then here's the actual version of my OC that's designed by a human artist, showing how Kyra looks different from her AI self.

Kyra Storm:

Artist: Little Tigress

I use it to help make the artist have an easier time figuring out what I'm trying to tell them, that way they don't have to rely on texts to attempt in drawing what I'm proposing to them.

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standing at ready to lock the thread if need be o7

7939372 I really hope it doesn't come to that.

I will say that I am surprised at how civil everyone seems to be so far.

As an open hater of AI artwork, this sounds relatively acceptable. I don't like it, since AI art rubs me the wrong way at just the mention, but it's nothing I'd be utterly furious over.

As someone with no artistic talent, or money to commission, outside of artists being generous and doing free work (Which I proudly show off on my page) this is kind of my only option for getting conceptualization. It will never be as good as an artist, that touch of human creativity is what makes it what it is. But it will help me keep that visualization for my own reference and if I am ever able to commission some art I can have the general idea ready for them when words fail me.
Though I should point out, I'm to stupid to even get that much out of AI so my view may be a bit skewed.

I have a story that had no artwork because what I would need to include artwork that made sense involved something more complicated than I could get by yoinking vector art from DeviantArt and photoshopping it into something interesting like I did with all my other cover art.

I did ask here if any artist was willing to help me, but see, I'm poor. Yes I could probably pay someone to do it, but with all due respect, I have to eat. If I had the money I would.

But for now, I felt I should have some artwork for my story. So I went onto an AI generation site and got the damn artwork.

It's worth noting though, that none of it is perfectly what I want, except for the one of Apple Bloom. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. Writing the prompts is a pain in the ass. I'm probably going to keep using it for artwork of the human-turned-ponies in one of my other stories.

I'm not doing this because I want to rip off artists or have them go hungry. I'm doing it because the only other option is not having anything at all. How does anyone benefit from that?

People really get their knickers in a twist over AI these days. They now have AI writing code, and as a software developer, I'm annoyed. But it does serve its purpose, I will say that. People getting into a moral tizzy over this is astonishing. It's the 'Dere teekin' ur jerbs!' mentality.

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7939457 Well, that's the thing, it could even be good for requesting art. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people pop up in this group, requesting art while providing little to no information on what they want.

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Personally I do not care what people do with AI art and there is really no way to scientifically prove that AI does indeed steel art. At the moment I feel it is baseless but an understandable fear. We have been fearing machines replacing us forever. As an artist, I say do as you wish just list your art as AI just like with every other form of art and we are good.

7939360 I guess I just don't see the point. Good old-fashioned referencing is pretty effective as is.

If you're using AI just to get a real artist to copy the AI art, I'm not sure I see the appeal. If you're using it as a brainstorming tool, I kinda feel like you get a broader and more varied result from something as basic as a couple of searches on pinterest (which I use a lot for pose referencing myself). If you want to use AI to get a specific artistic look unique to an artist, prolly just hire that artist, and if you're using AI to imitate a specific style or mood to convey to an artist, again, you've already found the style, so I feel like regular referencing would work just fine.

I'm sure a lot of artists would be able to work with a bunch of AI images as a sort of moodboard but I'm not sure they'd really need them either.

One of the problems with AI art is that it uses a lot of other images sourced from really who-knows-where to train them without credit or recompense; this isn't really an issue if it's just used as reference (since referencing is pretty standard in art anyway) but then I gotta wonder why not just use references to start with?

Just seems like an extra step to me, but whatever I guess.

Personally, I feel like those that will use AI art are going to use it regardless of how the art community as a whole feels about it, and I feel that those who want to use it should be free to do so as long as it fits according to the laws of copyright and all that. I’m saying all of this as an artist myself who is fortunate enough to have the ability to design my own OC, if ever cared for one, or my covers for the stories on this site, or anything else related. So this dilemma that is presented is not one I can exactly relate to.

All that to say, if you came to me and asked me to draw your character while using AI as a reference, my first question would be how much am I getting paid? My second question? How soon do you need the commission? Because who the heck cares? The market is far too over saturated with other talented artists to play picky-picky on how your customers approach you (beyond things like requesting fetish art when you clearly state no NSFW. Or asking you to draw a human if you are only comfortable with drawing ponies. An artist having limits should always be encouraged). Don’t get me wrong, I think AI is a massive problem, but from a different standpoint that doesn’t come from the individual consumer side.

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This reminds me of the Pony-Maker
Pony Creator V3

and how arted talked about it

7939646 I mean... Kind of.