#identifying AI

[creations-by-chaosfay]

Have you heard of the term "patterns mills"? These are shopfronts that quickly produce a pattern without any sort of testing or vetting, and then put it on the market with an AI-generated or stolen image for a very tempting price. Patterns produced this way are rampant in the cross-stitching world. However, I've recently noticed an uptick in these types of storefronts in the quilting and foundation paper piecing world. Since I'm well versed in FPP patterns, I would like to describe what an AI-generated quilt pattern looks like as well as provide other suspicious giveaways. AI will only get better, so while these mistakes are dead giveaways now, they might be fixed in the future. FPP patterns seem to be easier to replicate in AI than traditionally pieced patterns, which is why I will focus on FPP in this blogpost. However, you can apply the same clues to any sort of craft pattern (or really anything) you can buy online. Important: AI-generated images are not prohibited on Etsy. However, within their policies they state that you must disclose if you used AI within your listing, and these shops do not have that disclosure.

Below is a listing for a wolf face FPP pattern. When you first look at it, does anything seem suspicious?

First, I would like to draw your attention to the scissors in the bottom left of the photo. These scissors are physically impossible to use and are literally melting into the yellow cutting mat. The lines of this cutting mat are unresolved, as are the lines on the green cutting mat in the bottom right corner. These are your first giveaways. However, not all images have background sewing items that look a little funny. Let's take a look at the actual "completed quilt."

The first thing I notice is that the only background seam line (from this apparently foundation paper pieced quilt) is the one in the top left corner. The seam is merely hinted at and does not go all the way to the edge. Additionally, I notice that the eye is too round. One could argue that the cover photo is merely an enhanced version of the completed quilt, but there are no completed quilt photos in the listing. Another clue for identifying AI generated quilt images is that there are a ton of colors/prints used. The prints in this image seem nebulous and the prints around the eye whiskers (?) lose a lot of fidelity. The individual fabrics themselves do not have consistency.

In the image above, the things I notice are that there are curved seams within the gray and white colors. A typical FPP pattern would not have curved piecing interspersed between regular straight seam piecing. Also, piecing lines that are useless, especially visible in the bluish-gray piece on the left. The amount of piecing within that patch does not make sense. Below you will see another listing from a different Etsy seller.

From afar, it looks really good. Plus, the seller has great reviews! And it's a Bestseller! But let us take a closer look…

The first thing that sticks out to me is how the whiskers of the lion are resolved. You can see where they fade into the muzzle of the lion without a realistic piecing line. Some of the patches are straight up "smeary" and wrinkly, a telltale sign of AI. The program does not know how to accurately render the design so it creates an approximation. These are things that are hard to see unless you zoom in. Below is a listing for a legitimate lion FPP pattern from designer Pride and Joy Quilting so you can see the difference. It is clear that the first image is an actual completed quilt top.

Beyond the AI-generated cover quilts, I'd also like to cover other signs of a pattern generated from a pattern mill.

For the lion pattern, the cost is only $8.63. This is very cheap for what is supposed to be a full sized quilt pattern with a multitude of templates.

Both of these sellers have very generic names. While not an immediate cause for concern, I recommend being skeptical.

There are no actual completed quilt images within the listing.

Both of them are considered "Bestsellers" on Etsy, but the shop with the wolf pattern only has 10 reviews. It makes me wonder about the disparity between "buyers" and reviewers.

The 5 star reviews for the lion pattern are extremely generic and talk only about "how much their friend Lisa will enjoy the pattern" or "how easy it was to download." These are not helpful for understanding the quality of the actual product. The 1 star reviews are way more descriptive about the issues the pattern has. This makes me wonder about fake reviews.

Both of these patterns include a full layout of the FPP diagram within the listing. I personally would never do this and I don't know many designers who would.

The lion pattern says this within its description: "Before making a purchase, we'd like to inform you about some important aspects. The product stands out for its template, design, and print quality, serving as a valuable tool for sewing projects. The instructions include two techniques: direct fabric marking (with visible stitches) and invisible stitches. Both are general guidelines and not step-by-step instructions. You can choose these techniques or any other that you consider suitable based on your experience and preference. There are no refunds for the digital file. We appreciate your understanding and are available for any questions." This demonstrates to me that the pictures are not accurate because they are clearly attempting to depict FPP and are hoping that you won't read the description until it is too late.

Why is every lowercase i in the wolf pattern missing its dot? Like, why? I find that strange and off putting.

So, how do you avoid accidentally purchasing a pattern like this?

The first step is gaining experience in recognizing listings that seem a bit fishy. Use the bullet points listed above to see what kind of feeling you get when looking over a listing. I also recommend finding out more about the designer from their website or from their social media. Not all legitimate designers have these necessarily, but it's a great place to start. Try messaging the shop owner on Etsy. Does it sound like they know what they are even talking about? You'll then build a good list of designers and shops you trust. A big and worrisome thing to remember is that AI will only get better and produce better looking images. This will make it harder to identify pattern mills by the image alone. However, the clues that I've listed will help if you put them all together and come to a conclusion. I suggest using them for all your online shopping. I hope this helps!

[eggcats]

Honestly annoying as hell to constantly see "signs someone is using AI in their writing" and it's all normal shit everyone does, like I'm sorry using em-dashes and using normal words like "delve" doesn't mean it's AI it just means the AI stole someone's work and copied it.

Like. Every single time I look at my writing for fanfic and book reviews and it has like, every "red flag for AI" in them I get paranoid someone thinks I - a person who is STRONGLY anti-AI - used AI in my writing. I assure you I didn't, if my writing or reviews are bad it's all organic, baybee.

[casualavocados]

"Who is Ai Di to you?"

Nat Chen as CHEN YI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023)

[dirty-bear-rick-sanchez]

Do you think that Rick's car/garage knew that it was based on Diane prior to Unmortricken? I never even considered the possibility that it didn't until the other day when I realised how much more sense the salty 'you made me sound like your dead wife' line makes if the ship/garage discovered the truth at the same time that we did.

[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!

[lylahammar]

taking a deep breath and gripping my sword at my belt with a trembling hand as I turn my haunted gaze into the middle distance before typing "art nouveau" into pinterest to search for real human art for my project inspiration board

[gojoest]

good morning 🌸

[googleplaysore]

[carlyraejepsans]

HELPP i found out about character AIs and im losing it over calling deltarune sans "a more manipulative personality" 😭😭 like whatt we've only seen this man like 2 times

sorry im being a hater hgfjdks but you're the sans understander

lmaoo character.ai, look where the fall of ai dungeon got us, smh. thank you for the compliment though!

[sachiko-odile-aiuchi]

being on the internet in 2024 is like if the turing test had a ranked competitive format. spot the bot or you die. good luck

[snobgoblin]

big fan of whatever genre of animal this is

[tophatandboots]

The absolute AUDACITY of some people

I'm never going to eat mushrooms collected by some of the people who are convinced they know what type of wildflower they're looking at.

Making mistakes is one thing but getting stroppy when people point out you've mixed up ladies' smock (Cardamine pratensis, left photo) and yarrow (Achillea millefolium, right photo) when they really look. Quite different.

[brokenrefraction]

Nah theyre forcing us to use AI for a fucking school project

[harrow-v]

Today I used AI in a completely non-damaging and useful way. We went for a walk and I recorded and identified bird songs (Merlin Bird ID) and took pictures of spring flowers to find out what their names were (Flora Incognita).

These apps are free and serve a purpose. Flora incognita even uses the data you collect to track changes in a region's climate (blooming time or ripening of fruits) or the spreading of invasive species.

Best part? Merlin downloads all data you need for your region to use the app offline. OFFLINE. 700MB for all birds of europe. No FUCKING cloud service.

This is how "AI" is useful. It's deep learning/machine learning really. That is what all AI today is. Massive amounts of data and massive calculations running with presumable massive overhead costs (calculation time/needed energy) noone understands anymore where it's coming from.

[cctinsleybaxter]

Why is someone bragging about successfully identifying the rock from the fake ai rock scanner in the notes omfg

[frascospecimen]

Genuinely thinking google or some other similar service that uses ai for things lately is going to get sued soon for some horrible accident that comes as a result of this. And when it does it’s going to be a hugeeeee win for people who are sick of ai