#How to identify AI art

[amethystsoda]

April 2024 — updated tips for identifying ai art

[the-sunniest-angels]

Your artworks looks like AI

To be honest I'm guessing this is a bot because I don't think my art is really a style that is mistakeable as AI. BUT just in case this is someone who genuinely doesn't know how to differentiate AI art versus human art, I'm gonna make a post on it rq!

One of the ways you can tell my art is not AI is because you can see all the individual strokes that I made. My style in particular makes this easier to distinguish than others because as an artist I really embrace this, while others prefer a very clean lineart and coloring process.

Here are some examples from mine:

This is from one I made of Nico underwater. If you look at the water you can see all the places I drew each line. By contrast, zooming in on AI art doesn't show any brush strokes at all. Often, there's also a weird "fuzz" I've noticed? Like rather than a human artist who simply makes a, say, yellow banana, and if you zoom in you just see yellow, for an AI if you zoom in it weirdly looks like the AI is struggling to make every pixel yellow so each pixel is slightly different. That's what I think of as the art being slightly fuzzy.

I tried searching google for some AI art to use as examples of this but I'm currently in a different country for an internship and they're still getting my WiFi set up, so my connection isn't loading any of the Google images with enough clarity to be able to zoom in a bunch so I can show you. But it's something I've noticed for a lottt of AI art--and so this coupled with lack of brush strokes can be a sign of AI.

Another thing that, in my opinion, is a way to determine something is human-made is the shape of the canvas! In my experience, when I see AI art online, it tends to be a very similar canvas shape each time. I don't think most AI creations have the ability to be creative with canvas shape. Meanwhile, a human might choose to make their canvas super wide or long or whatever. Since I created each piece of my art individually for the purpose of eventually combining it all into a comic-ish thing, each canvas I made was very very wide which would have been unusual for an AI. Such as:

From what I've seen, an AI would have created somewhat more even dimensions.

And finally, one of the dead giveaways for AI versus human art is simply what mistakes are made in the piece. Neither AI art nor human art is usually absolutely perfect, but the mistakes that an AI makes are not usually the same ones that a human makes! For example here, I didn't actually make lineart or sketches for the background because I had figured "eh, how hard is it to make a background like this?" However you can tell this didn't work out perfectly for me because my "sun" did not end up perfectly round hahaha. Look above Nico's head. It's like sort of lopsided. Getting a perfect circle without any sort of lineart or tool is very hard as an artist, at least for me! However an AI would not struggle with making a perfect circle. It would have been much cleaner. However, an AI would have probably struggled more with things like color and style consistency in the wings (there are a lot of feathers that could trip it up), body proportions, etc etc.

And, overall, these three things together are very consistent with everything I post. AI would struggle to recreate a style like this over and over again, and it also tends to struggle to make the same face over and over. I'm not sure if you've ever seen one of those videos where people ask AI to duplicate an image without making any changes, but it really cannot do it. For this reason it would have been difficult for an AI to make the same face so many different times for a consistent comic.

I realize this ask was most likely a bot tbh since I think my art is pretty obviously human, but as a hater of AI art, I will never turn down an opportunity to talk about ways to differentiate human versus AI art. I hope this was helpful to anyone who struggles with identifying things like this!

[identify-ai-art]

As someone who has had to dig through AI "cozy home" photos I thoroughly appreciate @thenordroom for posting photos of REAL homes. I haven't checked every single post, but the ones I've looked closely at pass my criteria for REAL, not to mention this blog links sources! And through those sources the articles often have more photos of that house from different angles. If the post itself has 2 photos of the same room from different angles you can be confident that is a REAL home! The AI image generation softwares cannot remember things and thus cannot recreate an entire setting from a different angle, so if you confirm a few details between the images then you've got an authentic.

I have in fact used photos from their blog when showing friends and family an example of real homes photos versus ones that are AI. The level of detail is different, they can look similar at first glance but under scrutiny AI photos fall apart and these stand up!

If this anonymous person would like to bring up specific posts they think are AI or might be unsure, I would be more than happy to help analyze them to determine authenticity. I understand that as the technology progresses it gets harder and harder to identify, but it will not be perfect. There will always be signs, it just takes a little practice to notice them.

Do you post things that you know are AI?

These are all real homes!

[soundlessdragon]

I need to get off the medias before I'm so tired that I fall for those crappy ai images

[persephonaae]

I feel like there’s so many people now who are just so complacent with reblogging and interacting with ai art nowadays….

[saltandskeletrons]

Hi! I saw your tags on my post about AI and I was wondering what your job is that you are forced to use AI? Or just, what exactly are you using the AI for? I didn't know that work places were already incorporating ai in such a way that you would HAVE to use it.

Please don't answer either question if you feel they are too personal or if you just don't want to answer them for any reason at all. I'm just curious, is all!

Thank you for reading this and I hope you have a wonderful day!! 😊

Hey! Thanks for reaching out, I really don’t mind answering, and talking about ai generated art is pretty relevant to my career so this might be long lol.

my job is a part time graphic design student position at my university. Right now I’m working on a presentation where I have to visualize a lot of technology/ products/ and architecture that don’t really currently exist. My supervisor told me I should try using playground for some images and I was just like, ya ok I’ll try it.

(Personal opinions alert) I never used any ai image generation before bc I’ve always seen it as just stealing art. And I have no personal desire for ai writing/ visual art- it completely misses the point of making art to me.

But I am a designer which isn’t necessarily the same thing as an artist- and I don’t really get paid enough or have the time to start ethical conversations at my job. So forced was definitely a strong word to use haha but ai is really looming over the whole graphic design industry.

I know of some firms that proudly use mid journey and with a lot of free software available ai is being used more in low risk, low reward scenarios. It’s definitely not a necessity but there are designers that see it as a good way to save time but their design intent/ decision making is still at play.

But tbh the playground images I’ve ‘made’ look pretty bad and I think a sketch or photoshoped concept would look more sophisticated.

Tldr: ai image generation is being used in graphic design workplaces, but it’s not the main software being used at all. (I would argue bc it’s not good enough yet, and there is a lot of skepticism on the ethics of it)

[bikenesmith]

this is ai art y'all. phillip barminov is an ai art thief posting under the username "daydream.ai" on instagram. can't find this specific image on his account/don't want to dig too much and ruin my ig algorithm, but for the past several days he's been posting various approximations of marvel women in nightclubs, all tagged w/ ai art hashtags lmfao

The Weather Goddess By Philipp Barmoniv

[millkz227]

ai art is getting too good I don't know how to identify it anymore 😭😭😭

[striife]

Ngl i don't think you should have apologized here.

I understand that, to those who aren't extremely familiar with AI content, it might feel like you are guessing or making assumptions. But two seconds spent on your examples make it quietly obvious.

It isn't mistakable for beginner writing or purple prose. Just look at Song of Achilles, for example. A very flowery book, and none of it reads like the formulaic output of AI generated content.

You can use all the emdashes in the world and it still won't read the same as how AI does it.

The fact is: that content is AI generated. It's not an assumption and tbqh, it has nothing to do with enjoying the work or not. No one is going to arrest you for liking AI generated content. And we can pass a moral judgment on creating those works if we want. But personally, I think that's entirely separate and less important than simply recognizing it in the first place.

People who know what they are talking about are telling you guys plainly that this is clearly AI generated. If you want to dig your head in the sand about it, you aren't doing anyone any favors. And as a writer myself who likes using somewhat flowery language, there is simply no need to take this personally. To those of us who can tell, we can tell, and there's no mistaking it.

If pointing out passages that make this obvious can help anyone start to pick up on detecting these patterns for themselves, then quite frankly, that benefit overshadows the unfounded anxiety others might be feeling about it. If you aren't using AI, you've got nothing to be self-conscious about. But being able to recognize these things is an increasingly important thing in this culture.

we need to talk about The Silence and The Song

as per my last post, i have received a lot of encouragement to go public with this, and the more disappointed people i have in my dms, the angrier i get. so i will.

the silence and the song is an ancient arlathan au DA fic on ao3 by luxannaslut, and it is partly, if not entirely, written by an ai. i have no wish to be involved in any kind of fandom drama or witch hunting or bullying, but as a writer myself there are few things that piss me off more than watching people steal the work of others because they can't be fucked to write. it's disrespectful to your fellow writers, it's disrespectful to your readers, and it's disrespectful to the authors of the works the ai is stealing from.

ai is a plague that has no business being in creative spaces and you must do better.

the writing pattern

there was something very odd and monotone about the sentence structure of tsats that i couldn't quite place, so i fed chatgpt a prompt along the lines of "two people in a fantasy novel hate each other, but they secretly desire one another, and they kiss", and the screenshots above are the results. the third one is an excerpt from chapter 40 of tsats. the writing pattern is identical and it doesn't seem like the "writer" has even bothered to pretend they wrote it. if you're going to use ai, at least be sneaky about it. you know, paraphrase a little.

nonsense descriptions

"her nimble fingers worked with quiet precision" (ct. 1), "his grip firm but tender" (ct. 33), "her gown pooling around her like embers" (ct. 1).

fingers don't make sound, so what does quiet precision mean? as opposed to what? her joints cracking with every movement? how is a grip firm but tender? what does that mean? since when do embers pool?

the entire fic is littered with these adjectives that contradict each other or just straight up do not make sense, because all an ai does is generate descriptive language with no understanding of what the words it's spitting out actually mean. i could spend hours picking out examples from the seven billion pages worth of text, but i quite frankly have better things to do and would simply challenge you to try getting through a chapter or two without noticing the pattern.

repetition at structure-level

all the scenes in this fic are described in pretty much the same way. they open with purple prose vomit of the surroundings; solas is standing somewhere looking "unreadable as ever"; ellana's fiery golden molten fire copper ember ginger red hair is flowing this and that way; there's some dialogue with whoever is present and it leaves ellana feeling different variations of "something she couldn't name". this is, once again, a blatantly obvious sign of ai. below is the result of me feeding chatgpt the line "write me a scene from a fantasy novel where a woman with red hair is sitting on the ground in a magical garden at night", and side by side with that is the opening scene of the fic. make your own judgement.

repetition at word-level

this one speaks for itself. we fucking get it. her dress is orange, her hair is red, mythal's presence is heavy in the room, solas looks unreadable, compassion is sitting on her head like a crown, solas' ears are betraying him and ellana's move with every thought she thinks. we get it. the issue here is that an ai remembers the info you feed it, but not necessarily the info it shits out. if it's being told to write scene after scene of an elven woman with a gown that looks like fire doing xyz, it's going to do so with no regard for how many times the reader has already been informed of these details.

lastly: the breakneck speed

359,6k words in four weeks by a person who allegedly is employed and married and hasn't pre-written anything? no. any writer will tell you that this simply isn't possible. it absolutely infuriates me to see how much praise this "writer" gets for posting up to three full chapters in a day without anyone calling bullshit. i am pulling out my hair, you guys.

why i'm not going to live and let live this one

perhaps i would be less angry if the fic was some silly bullshit court intrigue Y/A stuff, but this is a text that handles very heavy and triggering topics such as SA, coercion, domestic abuse, and other things of the same vein. to sit back and put your feet up while having a robot write these extremely sensitive and very real human experiences with words it has stolen from texts written by actual persons is fucking heinous. the "writer" should be deeply ashamed of themselves and i'm sick and tired of watching people eat up their bs.

and on that note: the amount of people in my dm's telling me that they feel stupid and naive for not clocking this has infuriated me more than anything else. you're not foolish for this. being fed ai-generated bullshit is not what is supposed to happen on any creative platform and much less a fandom-centred one, so of course no one approaches a fic through that lens. fandom and fic writing is supposed to be about passion and the only person in this situation who needs to do better and change their behaviour is luxannaslut. polluting our creative spaces, wasting the time of your readers, and minimising the effort of actual writers who are working hard to provide content for us all to share and enjoy is vile and so, so lazy. i beg of you: do better.

[ms-demeanor]

Why reblog machine-generated art?

When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.

When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.

When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.

When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.

You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.

And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.

My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.

People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.

I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?

The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.

I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.

However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.

Also because it's just patently untrue.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.

It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.

I liked it.

I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)

Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?

My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.

What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.

And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).

There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.

I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.

Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.

[leidensygdom]

Commission scams: A guide on how to avoid them and find legit artists

Hello! I am writing this guide in order to hopefully help people spot scammers and art thieves, to teach people how to deal with them and to give people ways to actually get real artists for commission work.

For those who do not know, there is a recurring, extremely widespread type of scam where someone will advertise their commissions using stolen artwork, or (sometimes) traced or AI-generated pictures. This started (as far as I know) on Twitter, but it is currently in all sorts of social media (I have found them in Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky and Tumblr) and also on Discord servers, often large Discord servers requiring no invites or that are easy to find through Discord advertisement places.

These do obviously hurt both, the people seeking to buy a commission (who will either get their money stolen, or given a product that is not of the quality that was advertised), and the artists whose work is being stolen, who are not getting the work themselves. It is important for people to learn how to identify these people, and to quickly take action when possible. This post is kind of lengthy, so please press the Keep reading button below for the full guide! (And please do share this post around if possible- This is a very common scam and I have met far too many people who have fallen to it or have got their art stolen due to it, including friends and myself.)

So, how do they work? (in Social media)

In my experience, a lot of these scammers either run multiple accounts or are part of a larger scheme, operating in organized groups that follow similar tactics. They will very often use automated means to advertise en masse. Those in social media will make accounts that post some example artwork, often with a myriad of tags, in styles that do not match (see first example, featuring my stolen art :'')). They very rarely post anything that isn't stolen artwork, or have any actual real following they interact with properly. They will then very often spam heavily through replies (such as it happens in Twitter), posting hundreds of really similar messages in a short period of time. In the second example, you can see an account from one of these scammers that is using automated posts to garner attention, which are shared by similar accounts (notice the same exact wording between the first and third post). The third example (in the Replies tab) shows how one of this accounts replies "Hi" to every single message they get.

They will often seek posts from people who are searching for commissions, answering them (often with a "I do commissions, DM me") or other variants of that. (They often only share their "art" on DMs to not be caught stealing by the original authors.) You can see an example of that on the first screenshot below. On Twitter, Instagram and pretty much any place where you can DM people, they may also come to your DMs, often starting with a "Hello" or something so you answer to them, and then they will suddenly share their commission information (as seen in the second picture).

In any case, they rarely have publicly available commission sheets, and will only disclose their prices on DMs. They may share more stolen artwork in there. From there on, they will often speak in fairly broken English, and try to lead you to commission them. They will haggle the prices if they can- But they tend to be fairly steep, with them going up to $300 a fullbody, which tends to be unusual in people without a fairly established following or popularity.

They will often give you a payment method that does not allow for refunds- Such as sending the money to "Friends and Family" in Paypal. This is actually illegal for commercial work, so if you get an artist telling you to pay them through such a method, please do be incredibly wary: Professionals will use methods that do have an option for refunds.

2. How do they work? (on Discord)

On Discord, they will often enter in servers where there may be a place for them to advertise, or servers available through Disboard and other Discord-community searchable sites. Then, they will often not interact at all with the community itself, but they will jump to advertising channels and post about "seeking for work". I have found out that scammers operating on Discord do only very rarely also have socials, so look out for that. Do reverse searches if you can. Legit artists don't tend to join Discords solely to advertise, so look up "from: [name]" on Discord and check how they have interacted in the server, if they have done that in any way. See the first and second example for an example on how they behave. First example has art from @ydteus (in the second message, the dragonborn's source is unknown.) Second example is from one of these accounts who entered on a Streamers' Discord. Streamers and VTubers are very popular targets for these scammers. Third example (with art from absent_lambeth on instagram, and unknown for the second picture) shows another important point, which I'll explain below.

Many of these scammers do not have solid commission sheets showing examples and prices for them. The third one even mentions "it is under construction", fully knowing a commission sheet is expected. Not every professional artist has them, but most do. It is often expected that people who do commissions will have some sort of Terms of Service at the very least, even if they do not have a commission sheet.

3. What do they do?

They scam you. You may never get any art from them. You may get traced art, or art that is not of the quality they advertised, because the art they used for promotion wasn't theirs on the first place. Or you may get an AI-generated picture, too. In either way: You will find yourself with +$200 less in your pocket and no way to seek a refund. So, it's very important you know how to spot them BEFORE they scam you. I have known people who have lost their money

4. How do I actually spot them?

Simply put, they do not act like normal artists would. Let's make a handy list of suspicious behaviours to look for, though.

Most people who draw commissions won't directly DM you unprompted to ask you to pay them for work. If you get such a DM- Report as spam and block.

Most of them don't act like bots, either. If you're on Twitter or similar pages, seek for extremely repetitive posts, hundreds of Replies in their Replies tab that are copypasted or very similar. If you see that, report as spam and block.

Reverse search is sadly very unreliable nowadays, but it does not hurt to try. A lot of them will modify the picture so it doesn't show in reverse search, but try it- And seek if it links to a different account with a different name.

As an ESL, I hate to say this, but the grand majority of them have really broken English, so look out for that. Not every person with broken English is a scammer, but it is something common amidst them. You will notice they fail to communicate general information. Try to ask them for Terms of Service, for example: They will probably be unable to provide you anything (if they do even understand you.)

You will rarely find them on your own unless you frequent specific tags, such as "commission" or "openforcommission". Or even using completely unrelated tags in their posts. I found one of them using a tag about someone's death to cop violence on their anime art. These people mostly only interact with their fellow scammers, but not with artists you'd find through other means.

As mentioned above, they won't provide you a payment method that allows for refunds the grand majority of the time. If someone tells you to send them money "as friends and family" in Paypal, or through something life Ko-fi's donations (although this one is rare), do not pay them. This is a general advice: Do not use payment methods that do not allow refunds for people you don't know.

Ask them for a commission sheet, a webpage, their Terms of Service and other things. Professionals should be able to provide at least one of these, usually.

5. What do I do if I find out they have stolen art/if my art has been stolen?

If you have found stolen art, let the original artist known ASAP if you can find them. Ask for help from friends if you cannot find them.

If you're the artist, DMCA claim. Every page has it, it is required for them to have it. If you search "dmca form (and the website's name)", it should show up. Bsky only has it in mail form right now, but it's there. A DMCA claim is a Copyright claim, and as long as you can show that you posted your picture somewhere before they did, you can do it. The form may seem scary, but it is not all that much. They will ask for your legal full name, address, a mail + a telephone, the url of the post stealing your art, an url to where you posted it first, and to sign/agree to some terms. DMCA claims tend to be processed swiftly (in about a day) because websites can get in trouble if they allow for copyrighted content to be stolen. And you actually do have rights to any picture you have created without needing to trademark it or anything.

You may also want to ask your friends to help you report the account and/or posts. Often, reporting it for spam will give you the best results. DMCA claims will take down the offending posts, but sadly, reports in most major places are rarely taken seriously, but they may limit an accounts' reach or auto-flag it as spam in DMs, so it is still a fairly effortless option to follow. DO still DMCA claim them though.

6. Where do I actually find real people to commission?

Your best bet is through other real people. Let me explain some good methods for this.

Do you have friends who are artists? Ask them if they have commissions open, or if they know other people who take them. Artists almost always know other artists, and they can quickly find you someone you can trust.

Did a friend of yours get a commission? Ask them who was it from if you like the style, and they may be able to get you a link to their social media!

Do you follow artists for any sort of content you're interested in? (General art, fanart/fandom stuff, people you look up to, etc). You can check their work first and see if they have commissions, or if they share art from other people, and then check those.

Scammers really don't partake in fandoms or have art-related posts go viral (some get some follower-begging bait going viral, but that's it). Chances are that, if you found a cool art in your dashboard or timeline, it is from a real artist.

I think places such as VGen need verification for artists and have ratings. I am not personally experienced with it, but you may want to check that out.

You can always ask people to double check with you if you found someone but are doubtful about them being legit. If you are part of any community, do ask there! If you have artist friends, tell them! A lot of artists are acquittanced with the scam issue.

I have seen people do lists of artists available for commissions in places such as bsky, too. These can be an option, but always do verify that the people doing the list in the first place do seem like an actual person.

Ending notes

This is a very long post, but I really wanted it to be very thorough. I would greatly appreciate if you could share it around, as it is a very widespread issue that not many know how to identify. If you do find out scammers in Discords, please DM the servers' admins and link them to this post so they can get banned, in order to prevent scamming and art theft.

If you have any question or you need someone to help you verify an artist being legit or a scammer, my DMs are open for that too. I have talked about this a bunch in other places and I am fairly experienced with these cases, and I would be very happy to be able to lend a hand and find you an artist, if you do need the help. Thank you for reading!

[sabertoothwalrus]

any art tips about writing funny scenarios? i feel like i understand drawing but ive been in a total writing rut, especially when it comes to comedy :/

I think the main thing to consider is What Is The Punchline.

Something I see often in beginner joke-writing is having too much after the punchline. You don't need to have character A dunk on character B, and then have characters C, D, & E all reacting to it. UNLESS the reaction is the punchline. Remember how funny vines were? A lot of that came from them being only 6 seconds, and often cut off at the end. The Abruptness can absolutely add to the timing.

The other main thing is that comedy = contrast. Yesterday was April Fool's Day, and something I was seeing a lot of people do (myself included) was make some kind of "announcement", and then say some variation of "haha sike!" The thing is, this only works if your audience could have realistically expected you to make that kind of announcement in the first place. If an artist who has been staunchly and vocally against AI art posts an AI image, then... that's not really a joke? Your followers will be confused, not only because you're acting out-of-character about an issue that's politically charged, but also because you're still using AI art.

My own version of this joke was to redraw an old comic, which is something I love doing! I love revisiting old media I used to like, and I love redrawing art to track my improvement. My followers (hopefully) know this about me. The twist was that the comic I redrew was voltron, specifically klance, because I have the experience to know this would give a lot of people a lot of whiplash. Even after almost 9 years, just simply seeing the characters was enough to send people careening into a weird spiral of nostalgia and fear for my sanity, because of how controversial the show and its fanbase had become. But since most of the controversy was because of extremely-online drama, it was ultimately harmless (and people that are genuinely still into the show got some new art for it teehee!) I'm going to use a recent comic I did as a another example.

^ this is a comic about Ace Attorney, but honestly you don't really need to know anything about Ace Attorney except that "7yg" is a shorthand the fandom used for "7 year gap".

Panel 1: Setting the expectation. it's during the pandemic, so it's normal for people to have hand sanitizer on them. A precedence has been established.

Panel 2: Additional Context. Phoenix rummages through his pockets, which tells the audience he has a lot of stuff in them, and that he's identifying objects more by touch than by sight.

Panel 3: Anticipation

Panel 4: The punchline! Oops, it was lube! Small bottles of lube DO look & feel very similar to bottles of hand sanitizer, but people-- especially during a global pandemic-- do not typically carry small bottles of lube on them. Personally, I think Phoenix Wright could be the kind of person to have lube on him (for any number of sexual or non-sexual reasons), but the audience doesn't necessarily need to know that about him. Part of the joke is the nonchalance in his reaction; all you need to know is that Phoenix himself is not that surprised or embarrassed about having lube with him, or about having just dispensed some of it into his friend's hands.

Comedy is hard to explain!! It's also not very funny to explain. It really takes a lot of practice, and everyone has different tastes in humor/context/expectations anyway, so you're never going to make everyone laugh. Knowing your audience will definitely help.

[the-official-account]

I've tried to have conversations where I try to bring up how AI affects labor and how effective it'll be in particular contexts, so I could have an interesting perspective on how disruptive it could be for audiodrama. The immediate reaction? "AI is inherently terrible why are you bringing this up." My fault I guess

A lot of people on this website just approach AI from this extremely moralistic point of view of "AI is the bad machine that makes evil words appear on the screen and if you ever touch it your soul will be tainted forever" which, frankly, isn't all that great!

[elbiotipo]

In one of my posts the other day about how expensive smartphones are there were people saying that "the luddites had great ideas" like they were proto-socialists and all. And well. That isn't really the case, as some others explained their reaction to industrialization did not have any lasting change as a goal. I'm not really introduced to the historical specifics.

But anyways, what the luddites were like in 1800s England doesn't really matter as what identifying yourself as a luddite means in modern times: being anti-technology. And no, not skeptical of technology, not being in favor of a better use of technology, not hating on AI while liking other stuff. It's being anti-technology. Luddite is a word used for exaggerated positions like breaking machines. It's not a nuanced ideology or a thing you would like to be called.

And being anti-technology not only is as nonsensical as being anti-art or anti-philosophy, technology is one of the things that define humans since the Oldowan rock tools. But it also means being against progress. It is technology that has enabled social progress. It is technology that allow us to understand the world and also to build a fairer society. Material conditions and all that.

I will try to say this without getting into much theory or philosophy of science, but your focus should not be on calling certain technologies "good" or "bad" by nature, much less rejecting the advance of technology, as if that is possible or desirable at all. You should instead see how society uses technology and how the structures of society use it. And how to change society so that technology serves to the benefit of people instead of capital.

Anyways. Don't be a luddite.

[incaseyouart]

Just have to share this absolutely disgusting thing that just happened to me.

I was going to be selling at a one day event in Ottawa in July, called Fanaticon. The organizer asked me to send three prints and a photo of myself for the promo ad. Without my permission he then used an AI filter on said photo. I feel violated and disgusted because 1) how fucking ironic is it to use AI to promote an ARTIST for a con where AI art is NOT ALLOWED; 2) I do not identify as female and I am now feeling such an aggressive gender dysphoria it's insane; and 3) he didn't use AI on any other vendor promo (or maybe he tried and they all likewise disapproved), so to ME, that's implying that I am "not pretty enough" to be presented as is. Btw you can check out the other vendor promos on the instagram page

Anyways clearly I've asked for a refund, but I doubt I'll get one, since when I paid it was all "no refunds for any reason etc".

TLDR: IF YOU ARE PROMOTING ARTISTS FOR A CON WHERE SAID ARTIST IS SELLING ART, DON'T FUCKING USE AI IN THE PROMO AD FOR THE ARTIST.

[fourormore]

[Image description: A polyam flag with the words “four or more bingo” on it. End description.]

AO3 COLLECTION | SQUIDGEWORLD COLLECTION

AND WE'RE BACK!

I have a vision: a world where we can read about polycules and complicated relationships with four or more people until our eyes hurt and our hearts can't take it anymore.

Let me introduce to you: the 2025 Four or More Bingo! Thanks to a couple of suggestions I received last year, I decided to launch this event earlier in the year for more opportunities to write about those messy polycules.

This is a low-stakes, personal challenge. There's no penalty for not finishing or running late.

Cards will be given from now to December 31st. Fills can be posted starting June 1st to AO3, SQWA or tumblr forever.

GUIDELINES

Any medium! Any rating! As long as your work focuses on a relationship with 4 or more people, it's allowed!

All works must be your own and not previously posted. AI generated works will be deleted from the collections.

You may combine these with other events, as long as the other event allows it (examples are @polyamships' polyartober, lyricaltitles challenges, etc)

Small fandoms welcome!

Don't forget to comply with the community guidelines.

MEDIUM SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

Minimum wordcount for fics is 100 words. There is no maximum

Minimum for art is a sketch on unlined paper (figure sticks allowed!). There is no limit to the quality or effort you want to put in your fills.

Minimum for moodboards is a 3x3 grid (9 images individually or edited in one image). Maximum is given by the place where you decide to post. On tumblr, the maximum is 20 images, but on AO3, you're free!

Minimum for podfic is a 100-word fic. There is no restriction on maximum length or sound effects.

Minimum for fanvids is 30 seconds. There is no maximum.

Other mediums don't have a minimum. Do you want to make an in-universe magazine for your ship? A cross stich pattern? A sculpture? Go ahead and do it! I look forward to all the things you can create.

Prompts, FAQ and more below the cut

PROMPTS

The following are the prompts that the bingo card will be generated from. Send us an ask if you want a card, and if you want any prompts specifically excluded from it (you can exclude up to 5 prompts). Feel free to request a new card at any time through December 2025, even if you've already received one.

This year you can ask for a completely SFW card or a mix of SFW and NSFW prompts (this was a popular suggestion last year). Whatever card you choose, you will be allowed to blacklist 5 prompts from the list if you so desire.

Prompts are to be interpreted as freely as you want.

SFW prompts are not limited to SFW fills. If your story gets spicy along the way, there's nothing wrong with it.

Some of these prompts might seem familiar. That's intentional. We love big and complicated polycules at fourormore.

SFW PROMPTS

Home

Food

Kisses

Money

Competition

Jealousy

Limits

Complicated relationships

Labels

Awkward conversations

1930s AU

1960s AU

1990s AU

"That's not going to fit"

"You must think I'm stupid"

"I swear it was like this when I got here"

"We leave you alone one day and this happens"

Holy

Devilish

Loyal

Feral

Cozy

Old-fashioned

Dancing

Singing

Running

Grief

Joy

Space

Forest

Lies

Drama

Film

Memories

Late nights

Holidays

Fear

Pain

Cold

Flowers

A fandom you've never written before

A fandom that's 10+ years old

A polycule with 5+ people

A polycule with 10+ people

A polycule spread around the world

--

Opt-in NSFW prompts

Recreational substance use

Free use

Tied up

Delayed orgasm

Awkward positions

Just hands

No hands

Casual sex

Something made them do it (sex pollen, fuck water, in heat, etc)

Blood kink

Knife play

Undernegotiated kink

Teaming up

Public place

Monsterfucking

FAQ

Q: So how do I get a card?

A: Send us an ask, preferrably off anon, but if you prefer to remain anon, leave an emoji to identify you by.

Q: How many fics do I need to write?

A: For a bingo, 5 prompts in a line (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal). You can even go for a blackout (all 25 prompts).

Q: Why isn’t X allowed?

A: Just because.

Q: I don’t have a Dreamwidth account. Can I join?

A: Of course! You don’t even need an AO3 account if you wish to post only on tumblr.

Q: My work contains [INSERT WARNING HERE]. Can I still participate?

A: Yes. This is a CNTW (Choose Not To Warn) space.

Q: I don’t want to see [X] content, can you please remove it?

A: No. The only content that will be removed will be that that does not comply with the rules.

UPDATE: We now have a General FAQ that applies to all events.

COMPLETION POSTS

So, you have a bingo (or a blackout!), what now?

Well, to acknowledge the fact that you spent time and effort on at least 5 fics, we’ll be receiving bragging posts (also known as completion posts) where you can link all of your fills at once. Please follow this format. You may post on your own blog and @ us, tag #fourormore or submit it to the blog.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to send a message.

Have fun and bon appetit!