You might have noticed a forum thread discussing whether AI comics should be hosted on the Duck. As always, big decisions on TOS or policy are discussed with the community on the Duck before we take any decisions. Whether DD will be hosting AI comics or not is one such decision. I urge you to read through this article, perhaps also do your own research, and then sound off in the comments here or in the forum thread.
So the issue is whether DD should host AI comics at all. And if no, why, or if yes, under which conditions (and why).
The whole issue of AI art and (lately) AI comics coming in strong to disrupt the artistic community is no news at this point: the artist community has already been pointing out the big problems AI art and its shadily collected datasets are presenting.
You would think that the comics industry is insulated from this issue, given the sequential nature of comics and graphic novels, and the need to keep characters and setting consistent throughout a work, but you'd be wrong . AI comics are already a thing. People have been making them and they want to be able to pitch them to audiences and publishers alike, alongside human-made comics.
AI art is spilling into comics as much as it is in every other segment within the art field. And we need to make a decision on what to do about it, as AI comic creators have already been knocking on the doors, so to speak, of DD asking to be hosted.
Now, if you take a look at the forum thread, you will see I'm absolutely, adamantly against the notion of AI comics art until at LEAST the datasets it's being trained on are ethically harvested/collected and the human creators of the images it is being trained on are compensated for every click of the “generate” button (or whatever buttom churns out images at the drop of a hat).
I wanted to offer a balanced article, however, when I researched the positives of AI generative art that goes beyond the brainstorming stage and gets into actually creating the finished work (which is what concerns us here), I got half-baked arguments on the effort and art in creating prompts (which is presented as a tough artistic skill like you would expect knowing how to work watercolor or something). I also got a fairly balanced pros and cons article that basically still stops at the problem of the art-theft-dataset issue. Lastly, I got articles on the so-called democratisation of art positing that people can skip needing to learn the skillset that will allow them to make art, making it easy for anyone to do it (which is honestly, a dumb argument).
All of the arguments for AI art as a finished product (I'm not bothering with people using it as a source of inspiration and/or brainstorming) basically have the same problem: they fail to account for the need to use existing human-made art as a crutch, they fail to account for the problem of art styles being eliminated or not even developed (those people without skills would develop fresh and diverse art style sif they bothered to pick up a pencil), and they fail to account for the greed that seeks to kill artists' jobs in favor of cheap, bottom tier art that isn't any different than poo wrapped up in tinsel.
So I'll say clearly that unfortunately this is not a balanced article introducing an issue. This is an argumentative article supporting a specific side, because I can't in all honestly find a neutral point that will be sincere. Perhaps because I am an artist, regardless of what level or quality of artist, I do identify as one.
But let's get back to our issues here.
What would happen if DD were to allow AI comics?
Initially, it might not be cause for concern or bring about any changes that DDers notice. An AI comic will be one among the others that were human-made. However, the more the word will spread that DD hosts AI comics (when other webcomic hosting platforms are banning them) the more AI creators will flock to us, and bring their AI comics with them. It won't be too hard to flood DD with scores of AI generated comics simply because they are very easy to make. In the end, there's a very real possibility that the ratio of AI to human made comics be tilted, drowning out true creativity.
And if you think this problem is far away, just google “AI comics” and watch how many “how to” pages appear and how many AI generators specifically for making comics turn up.
Can you be creative with AI comics? Possibly. There are artists that have produced interesting experiments with AI. But even so, the datasets used still make this creative use of AI as a tool problematic. It's still theft, as long as the engine has been trained on images scraped from the internet without consent.
The powers that be are racing to get new regulation in place to protect creators, but as of now we're still in that “wild west” stage of things, and we need to do our own regulating and management.
If DD were to host AI comics, it would need to be heavily regulated and kept from the front page, where human made comics are featured and regulated, and only if generated by an engine with ethically procured datasets. They wouldn't be allowed to advertise on the site, either. But if we allow people on the platform only to treat them as pariahs, why allow them on at all in the first place?
Please add your own two cents! (yes, whether you disagree or agree!)
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AI, Comics, and DD
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Nov. 25, 2023
11 likes!
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Ozoneocean at 5:52AM, Nov. 25, 2023
That will force the use of AI art generation back towards the pros because you can't afford to offer it up for free any longer if you have to pay for the training.
Ozoneocean at 5:51AM, Nov. 25, 2023
@Neil- Think of it in terms of software sharing and media piracy in the early 2000s: people all said that was a Pandora's box and we'd live with that new reality. yet it wasn't like that at all. Legal stuff came down hard and the internet was balkanized up into separate zones (Facebook, twitter, Apple stuff, Google etc), the apps and services took over. Use of AI will be like that most likely because that's the direction things are already going in: Serious professionals run into trouble with copyright when they use the common ones based on piracy which is why Adobe went a different direction. If we get enough legal challenges in Mijourney and the rest will be forced to deleting their training data-sets and go in the same direction.
NeilPurcell at 4:48AM, Nov. 25, 2023
AI art may or may not be ethical. I can't say, but the question of whether or not to ban should probably be more of a pragmatic decision. If you want this site to be artists first, then ban. But I also think you open a pandora's box, because I can see other uses of AI that may still draw uncomfortable questions of artistic purity. Like, I've considered using it to generate temp backgrounds that can be drawn over later. Is that the kind of thing that would be allowed? (And how would you even detect it?) I'm also of the opinion that AI comics will just be a thing, and there's really not anything we can do about it. There might be a dark period for a while, and then, when people get tired of seeing samey art, they'll inevitably come back to the skilled illustrators. But we may need to let things play out before that happens. I don't think there's much success to be found in trying to regulate AI. And we may need to adapt our purity stances in the process.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 4:16AM, Nov. 25, 2023
Me, I find myself leaning heavily on us following Comicfury's example and ban AI comics outright. Part of me would like to compromise, but the risks involved I think are too great and a clear limit too difficult to draw, at least for the time being. In any case I don't think we should ever underestimate this thing, it's becoming too big of a deal.
NeilPurcell at 4:14AM, Nov. 25, 2023
What I'm about to apply to the full article because some of the talking points don't apply, but interesting phrases come out of this write-up when you replace "AI" with "sprite".
Stahlberg at 4:05AM, Nov. 25, 2023
All for a ban. I'm a professional artist and my income has been shrinking since December last year, because of AI. Friends and colleagues have been laid off left and right because of AI, and it's accelerating. It's also affecting music industry, game industry, basically all creative professions except RL media maybe (but these will be hurt too when the general public gets used to AI being the norm. Beginners are giving up on art because of AI. If this continues I see a future devoid of art and artists. Nothing short of a total society-wide ban on all machine-learning apps used in creative fields can save us now.
marcorossi at 1:51AM, Nov. 25, 2023
@plymayer: for example, if we compare AIs to people using cameras VS painting, a painting museum doesn't put photographs and oil painting togerher pretending that the photograph is just a very realistic oil painting, the two are kept separate.
marcorossi at 1:47AM, Nov. 25, 2023
My two cents: I'm pro ban, not so much because of ethical concerns but because practically I think AI comics, as they are faster to do, would saturate the site and make life impossible for normal ones. There might be ambiguous situations f an author e.g. uses AIs only for backgrounds, but it is difficult to put a clear limit of what is allowed and what not, so provisionally a general ban makes sense.
plymayer at 1:07AM, Nov. 25, 2023
We are not Comic Fury but they have just addressed this. At this time they are banning AI. Giving those comics already there a grace period. It's a good policy. I'm sure there will be A.I. webcomics sights if your looking for that. Me I'm still on the fence as to the whole A.I. thing. Is it art? Is it the same as when folks started using cameras? Is it a tool? Or cheating. I don't know. Haven't made up my mind yet on the whole AI thing.
Ozoneocean at 10:35AM, Nov. 24, 2023
At this stage probably a ban is a good idea. We're a creator site and we support creators not art theft, which is what AI generated art essentially represents. Adobe has an ethical engine that was trained on copyright free and licensed art but how are we to know the AI source? Functionally a ban will just be us saying we don't support AI art and asking people not to post AI comics. That's my thinking at the moment after what Tantz has said.