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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