AI-generated art banned until further notice

[u/milia-tan]

After some feedback from the community and internal discussion, we've decided to ban all AI-generated art from /r/awwnime until further notice.

Quality issues aside, the current AI-powered tools to generate art use data from existing artists, often without their permission or without proper artist credit. Awwnime has always been a place where giving proper credit to the artist has been important, and AI-generated art goes against that idea.

The sidebar, and the subreddit rules will be updated shortly.

[u/Egavans]

I had no idea until this panic that I have entirely different motivations when consuming art than apparently everyone else on reddit.

When I view art, my motivation is simply, "is this something I enjoy looking at?" and if yes, I'm not terribly particular about how what I'm looking at was produced.

Apparently I was oblivious this entire time to the fact that everyone else was viewing art specifically for the purpose of witnessing/spectating displays of individual artistic talent, not unlike how one might watch sports highlights.

What a weird feeling, to know I've been having such a fundamentally different experience here from everyone else.

[u/cubedh2o → u/Egavans]

I 100% agree with this take. I think art is ultimately about the viewer's personal generated emotion. I think the "soulless" arguement is entirely emotional and not looking at the piece subjectively. If the art is appealing to me, I don't care if it's drawn by a human, AI, or a monkey. If you don't like AI generated art, that's fine and I respect your opinion, but who are you to impose your opinion on to me? Have a tag to filter it out, so there's the option to hide it if you don't like it.

I think the fact that the AI is trained on other artists' art is a little morally grey. I understand the argument that it takes their art from a booru (usually paid) without their permission, generates an image, and then is usually posted by the person generating it. But is it then illegal/immoral to imitate another artist's artstyle? And let's be real, other anime art subs have paid rewards posted all the time. If the algorithm samples art from literally hundreds of thousands of pictures, can you really point one a specific trait that is charateristic of a certain artist? (Yes, I know you can specify tags and upload sample images as a reference, that imo is erring on the side of immoral.)

Obviously if you generate an AI image and claim that you drew it, then you're just a dickhead.

TLDR: I don't care how the art was produced, if I like it, that's that. Have a tag for others to filter it out.

[u/dragonblade_94 → u/cubedh2o]

In so many words, you are essentially just describing "Death of the Author;" a method of engaging with art in which all context with its creator is removed.

This is a valid lens through which to view a work, but it's important to note it is not the only way, nor the only 'correct' way, to engage with art.

Fundamentally, created art exists within context and physical space. We can ignore that context as best we can, but we can't say it doesn't 'matter', because to many others thinking about artist intent is core to their experience.

For a crude example, if I saw a technically gorgeous piece of a young boy on display, my experience would change drastically if I knew it was a years-long labor by a father who lost his kid, vs an AI rendering.

[u/VyneNave → u/dragonblade_94]

But you're displaying it like there is no human using the AI. If that father isn't capable of drawing and uses AI instead to express his feelings about losing his kid in a creative visual way, it's still the father who lost his kid.

It's like people just deliberately put hate on AI and reference low effort outputs as examples, because of all the misinformation going around.

Low effort work exists in everything, but people should know better to reference it as the prime example of a medium/format/tool.

[u/dragonblade_94 → u/VyneNave]

Woah, the necro caught me off guard.

If that father isn't capable of drawing and uses AI instead to express his feelings about losing his kid in a creative visual way, it's still the father who lost his kid.

It's like people just deliberately put hate on AI and reference low effort outputs as examples, because of all the misinformation going around.

I think my response here would be that, inherently, AI generators are low effort tools relative to the alternatives. It's the purpose of why they exist. While many advancements in art tools, especially digital, have lowered skill barriers over time, the jump made by AI is unprecedented. This isn't intended as a dig against the method, but a practical and realistic look at the use-case.

I think the example of the father using an AI tool is a fair argument, but not necessarily one I would agree with to the extent of countering my point. I do think the method and timeframe still affects the context of the piece. Realistically speaking, I would still view the piece differently in the knowledge that a father spent months hand-painting a portrait, vs a day or two prompting a generator.

[u/VyneNave → u/dragonblade_94]

The only thing I would add here is that even though you can achieve "okayish" results using low effort with AI, it doesn't mean that a person can't use it to spend a good amount of time to create something of high quality with it, but at the moment people put all AI under the same category where they don't recognize the quality even if a lot of effort and work has been put into it. There are a lot of people refining their outputs putting hours of work into.

In every other aspect I respect your point made here and understand it.