Culture DeviantArt Gets Condemned for Promoting AI-Generated Content - The platform's recent Twitter post dedicated to a seller of AI images didn't sit well with real artists. (March 21st, 2024)

Article / Archive on March 21st, 2024 [EDITOR'S NOTE: Some tweets are a bit unsized. Couldn't fix.]

While most online platforms dedicated to digital art are now focusing on combating the ever-growing scourge of AI-generated images, or, at the very least, making it easier for users to remove artificially created content from their feeds, it appears that some websites decided to opt for a contrasting approach and support "the next big thing" instead of real human artists.

One such platform is DeviantArt, which recently found itself under fire following the publication of a Twitter post promoting one of the website's "top sellers", a user known as Mikonotai, who allegedly raked in more than $12,000 on DeviantArt in 2023 alone.

What the post failed to mention, however, is that Mikonotai is not a real artist as one could mistakenly assume, but rather an AI enthusiast who generates their images using Midjourney and Stable Diffusion and then sells them in bulk using DA as nothing more than a digital store.

Following its publication, the post in question quickly got a community note from Twitter, which added much necessary context by highlighting that Mikonotai is a generative "artist" and not a real one. Additionally, the note pointed out that most of the seller's images are priced at less than $10, casting doubt on DeviantArt's claim of Mikonotai's $12K earnings last year.

Needless to say, DeviantArt's decision to highlight generative content didn't sit well with the larger community of Digital Artists, which condemned the platform in the comments, describing such a promotion as fraudulent and outright offensive:






Apparently, the platform's SMM department is currently on damage control, hiding many of the comments under the original Twitter post:


Despite the flurry of criticism DeviantArt faced, the Twitter post in question is still available as of now and can be accessed by clicking this link.

This situation demonstrates that despite the growth of the generative AI industry, real artists aren't going to give up easily and will continue to fight against the machine in this ongoing "cold war" between humans and artificial intelligence.

Regarding the Humans vs. AI conflict, there has been a notable development recently as the carbon-based side secured a major win by passing the world's first law limiting AIs in the European Union. With overwhelming support from 523 votes, the new law aims to safeguard human rights by assigning obligations to AI systems based on their potential risks and levels of impact.

 

[The Feline Solution]

I'm not fully on board with AI, but a lot of DA artists use Photoshop and tablets, devices that help you to correct lot of mistakes that wouldn't pass easily if you're using only your hands and pencil. When my cousin studied architecture, he had to draw straight lines by hand as requirement of Drawing 101. Now, software straightens your trace.

Yeah, been saying it for years, these artists would be worth shit without the "Undo" button.

These online artist's are really overreacting when it comes to A.I art. Good artist's aren't really going to suffer if they have an art style that differentiates from the rest of the competition. A.I art also has this strange look most of the time to the point where it's very easy to point out that it wasn't created by a real person.

Definitely. No one who works with traditional media, like acrylics on canvas, cares about AI either, it is a curiosity at best to them.

 

[Conspiracy Mawile]

I can understand being offended as an artist about stuff like this, but it is not like AI art is going to magically vanish or just disappear. It's here to stay, and that doesn't mean anyone is forced to use it. But if you wanna earn your money as an artist, you should really learn to have a competitive mindset and use all tools and advantages you have at your disposal.
It's not like your competitors are going to cut you some slack.

 

[Da Grim Reaper]

it's over for sonic foot fetishists

 

[Mad Mamba]

Artcels once again on suicide watch.

 

[Syntaxion]

Yeah, been saying it for years, these artists would be worth shit without the "Undo" button.

???

 

[make_it_so]

I remember years ago when dA was a great site find all kinds of awesome fanart. These days, though, pretty much all the fanart you try to find on dA is either AI created, or fetish art (or both).

Know what a real deviantartist creates? Collages of a bunch of stolen images with faggoty shit like "what if (anime character X) was played by (western cartoon character X)?" Or put a couple dozen characters in front of a stadium or fast food place and you do that four thousand times that's a true deviantartist.

Also this.

 

[ZazietheBeast]

Ah yes, the art platform owned and operated by the chosen people sitting at Tel Aviv that did away with a perfectly good UI for its cancerous eclipse mode as well as the search bar only yielding curated crap instead of the wild west that was the new section.

Deviantart deserves all the flak it gets.

Shitty artists are not happy that everyone with a brain can finally express themselves with the help of AI.

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

DeviantArt has been pro-AI for years at this point, most likely because all the good artists have moved on from the site and all the team has to show for it is furry inflation.

Well it's AI-drawn furry inflation now, apparently. Hundreds of thousands of images, and it's putting furry inflation pornographers out of a job.

What a time to be alive.

We must dissent.

 

[Whatevermancer]

Deviantart cannot stop shooting itself in the foot, and it's a shame cause there's no other social network for art hobbyists.

 

[The Feline Solution]

View attachment 5837386
???

Different pair of shoes. I am only a secondary in the art world via a friend who has a name (not a big one, but he's known around here) in it and the artists who, as i stated above, work with non-digital media are not comparable to those that solely work on their tablets.

 

[Slav Power]

Eh, I only use DeviantArt for software skins.

The UI has gotten worse over the years; they got rid of categories to organize what your work falls under. For example, non-isometric pixel art was separated from isometric pixel art, and mixed media was its own category separate from work done purely with pastels or watercolor pencils.

That was one of the stupidest things they ever did, in my opinion.

Though yeah this was the most retarded decision because before every skin was sorted based on software. You wanted a Rainmeter skin? There was a Rainmeter catergory. You wanted a Winamp skin? There was a Winamp category. Now you just have to hope that when you search "rainmeter skin" you will find what you're looking for in between people showing off their desktops because that used to be a different category but those are now gone, or that one of the groups has a good, up to date catalog of skins.

The one good use case I had for that site and they made it harder to use it for. Complete muppets.

 

[Equal Rights for Androids]

Eh, I only use DeviantArt for software skins.

Though yeah this was the most retarded decision because before every skin was sorted based on software. You wanted a Rainmeter skin? There was a Rainmeter catergory. You wanted a Winamp skin? There was a Winamp category. Now you just have to hope that when you search "rainmeter skin" you will find what you're looking for in between people showing off their desktops because that used to be a different category but those are now gone, or that one of the groups has a good, up to date catalog of skins.

The one good use case I had for that site and they made it harder to use it for. Complete muppets.

Not only this but their search engine has been thoroughly fucked. In the early 2010s I remember wide-searching for a very specific keyterm and sorting by most popular worked. Nowadays, This Century doesn't even bring up those images even though they're still the highest in views, favorites, and comments. They're buried, literally 12 pages deep, with the earlier pages filled with lower quality trash that has less engagement. I fucking hate what deviantart has done to itself. It used to be good. The best site to go to for art.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Not only this but their search engine has been thoroughly fucked. In the early 2010s I remember wide-searching for a very specific keyterm and sorting by most popular worked. Nowadays, This Century doesn't even bring up those images even though they're still the highest in views, favorites, and comments. They're buried, literally 12 pages deep, with the earlier pages filled with lower quality trash that has less engagement. I fucking hate what deviantart has done to itself. It used to be good. The best site to go to for art.

At least you didn't make the mistake of searching for two differt descripors like "purple rose" because it will give you plenty of purples and a few roses but none that fulfill both. Literally broken on a fundamental level and has been for years now.

 

[derpherp2]

Bitch boy you can't stop AI-gen by yelling like a retard at it.

If anything you're just giving it more behavioral models to headbutt into content.

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

All this reminds me of the guy who told me to be a carpenter he for the longest time refused to use nail guns but to be fair in the 1980s nail guns will kind of dog s*** and they didn't come around to really like 90ish.
But yes there was Carpenters up until the 90s who refuse to use nail guns tongue and groove plywood and other materials.
Something that could save you getting carpal tunnel in your 50s nah.
By this standards Photoshop mixing electronic instruments sampling is the work of the devil and shouldn't be allowed you're only allowed to play instruments you can't record anything.
Writers use quills
Also them getting rid of categories like literature where you don't have to wait through a bunch of annoying journal entries to actually find stuff you want to read

 

[WhiskeyJack]

What the post failed to mention, however, is that Mikonotai is not a real artist as one could mistakenly assume, but rather an AI enthusiast

“He’s not a real artist!!” shrieked the 300 pound ‘woman’, while scratching ‘her’ balls and searching for sissy pron.

 

[klarine]

Let him be, he identifies as an artist. What even is an artist? AI artists are real artists

 

[Kirtto]

It makes pronouns weirdos angry therefore I like it.

The more artists lose their jobs because AI generated art, the better because most of this artists are all leftist freaks

 

[Fatsuit Shinji]

I remember years ago when dA was a great site find all kinds of awesome fanart. These days, though, pretty much all the fanart you try to find on dA is either AI created, or fetish art (or both).

It depends on which "fetish" as even few categories of it got mostly or completely nuked off of dA.

 

[Cpt. Stud Beefpile]

It depends on which "fetish" as even few categories of it got mostly or completely nuked off of dA.

I'm part of a Burned Fur remnant who helped accomplish that, proud to say. Unfortunately they're clearly happy to let plenty of OTHER freaky ass fetishes stay, including the really fringe shit that rightly scares normies away and makes them blacklist the site so their kids dont run into it.

DA can be ragged on for plenty of good reasons but they are one of the oldest digital art sites around and there's still plenty of non-AI, non-shit content. But their godawful UI change really caused an exodus.