DeviantART Just Betrayed Its Whole Community. (DreamUp AI Controversy) || SPEEDPAINT + COMMENTARY

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[@DuchessCelestia]

UPDATES: a viewer helped me better understand the situation, so i’m going to add that further clarification here. - DA technically didn’t use their own entire library of deviations, but apparently exclusively used LAION’s. LAION contains a massive number of images from deviantart that were taken without permission, though, so it’s fundamentally just as exploitative and deceptive. - i wasn’t clear enough when i explained how the art was used; it’s not that deviantart DID use every single deviation for training, it’s that every single deviation was LIABLE to have been used, and may have been. since any deviation on the platform couldve been used and we have no way of knowing which ones were, that is, to me, effectively the same, but it is still an important differentiation that i failed to make in the video. - DA does claim that they will not use deviations for future datasets if users opt out, and that they didn’t use them in the first place. this is deliberately dishonest, because they used LAION, which used deviations - they didn’t do so directly, but they did use them. and in terms of future use, since they’re going to continue to use LAION and LAION will continue to use opted-in artwork, it’s also untrue that they won’t use them in the future. that means that it’s still possible that during the hours that all art was opted in, those works could already have been used. that said, the viewer that reached out to me is fairly sure that it’s unlikely for LAION to have done this during that time frame due to its latest version having been released so recently, so that’s a big reassurance.

[@Emily_Bondevik_Official]

How do I opt out? I do not want my art stolen for the sake of AI

[@lycandoodle]

@@Emily_Bondevik_Official They changed it so anyone is already opt out and need to opt in if they so choose from the massive backlash so you're good.

[@SuzieArtistAU]

I'm so grateful I didn't post anything on Devin art I was going to until I saw this 😭

[@nathanielscott4413]

Does every place for artist have to be so evil nowadays? This really helps erase the true expression of artist. Artist are being mistreated and if nothing is done about it. Could destroy the art industry.

[@wienzard93]

lol, regardless. i already deleted all of my deviations few hours into the tweet they made. i will no longer use the site. they've been very shady ever since they changed the site all those years ago. this AI-thing is nail in the coffin for me. i'm just waiting for something to finally leave DA for good. this is great time as any.

[@spaceman1501]

Calling yourself an 'artist' because you can use AI is the same as calling yourself a 'chef' because you know how to order delivery food

[@Grainofsand_gs]

Perfect analogy

[@mooniekitty3619]

As if Devaint Art couldn’t get worse

[@naraku971]

Never challenge worse.

[@opaloparu6048]

Right? As if!

[@mooniekitty3619]

@@opaloparu6048 love your pfp

[@gaybitchynerd]

@@mooniekitty3619 where the hell do you guys find those cute pfps lmao

[@brainbomb.]

Bro I wish.

[@CatQueenOfPluto]

It was really disappointing to see how deviantart went about this. I had 17 years of art on there. What made me mad though was that my art in the subscription teir had been automatically opted in (well before their descision to make it all opt out). On top of my voicing my concern about my commercial art and subscription stuff being opted in, they did their lil podcast and interrupted artists. To me that was just unforgivablely rude and solidfied my decision to take my art. I left my account up just in case but I'm definitely looking into making a proper website for myself

[@thaumana8489]

And sadly just adding a default opt-out option won't stop reposters and art thieves from posting other artists' artworks with an opt-in flag anyway, and maybe that was also part of their calculation on DA's side, so no matter how, at the end the AI database get fed from the point on when it was integrated.

[@Alphanoob99]

17 years of art? damn. TBH, it feels like they did a massive art theft and they need to be sued for this IMO. Best of luck creating your own website. I removed most of my random doodles and drawings in 2016 because of a incident in 2016 with art thieves being rampant, I happened to have a few drawings on my devianart now and I feel bad that even when my drawings were bad as heck, they were still my creations... I delete them all after making back ups of them on my computer. I am thinking of opting out of most of social media for I haven't even not post my humble creations for a long time and I planned to delete those as well, having an AI come by and sweep al of my works, even when my works ain't masterworks, it kinda upsets me.

[@Emily_Bondevik_Official]

Sue them

[@dannieamme8180]

Big Tech is swimming in so much Money why can't they pay Artist?of course Greed could be the answer, But the level of Disrespect is amazing

[@vakho30]

I've had DA account with art for over decade (13 years) and they banned me for my religious views when they had forceful pride month or something. And that was not only me they've banned. What is even worse is that you can't delete your account or your art when they permanently ban your ass :( What is the actual world of sanity is going on!

[@StellaDaBest]

I hate ai art so much, I know not everything about it is bad but I can't bring myself to say anything positive about it when it have hurt so many artists. Also I'm glad I don't use Da anymore

[@magicalgalaxylavender]

Same I don’t even call it art I call it ai imaging

[@straawberryfieldsforever]

Same. I stopped posting on deviantart a long time ago but it hurts, that AI would be able to copy styles that artists train so hard to develop. To me, AI art is like if the olympics were just bots made by different countries and humans had to compete against them. Of course the bots get the upper hand! Art loses its meaning if its only generated and not done by an artist. It may look pretty but theres no soul, no idea, just a prompt and data

[@magicalgalaxylavender]

@@straawberryfieldsforever exactly I am so glad I didn’t post anything on my DA I am just worried about instagram now I heard adding noise to your art can help prevent it because it messes with its ability to read the Pixels

[@danyakurachianimeart5069]

Yea This really flipping Sucks, And I can't do nothing about leaving Deviantart cuz is the only website that gets me popular, I've been a deviant for 5 years but I haven't post anything in 2018 and then I returned in early 2021! GOOSH!! I wish I never returned for this god sakes site 😤

[@Riku_nkmr]

It's less about the tech itself and more about how it was used. Imagine if these were only trained in actually public domain images(you know, like how they do with music AI because they're afraid of record labels), and then you overfit it with your own art and nobody else but you gets to use the overfit. It would be godsend to artists who can no longer paint/draw due to a medical condition. Though obviously having someone you taught draw for you would be superior, but just saying.

[@lavandulaartemis7152]

Many bases on DA are made from screen shots from copyrighted shows/manga/etc that are made by big art corp, which could put DA in a whole lot of trouble if they plan on doing this without people's consent/make it difficult to take down their art from the generator thing. They could be sued big time if I'm not mistaken. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[@kemiandthemachine]

Exactly! Not to mention there are a lot of small accounts made by younger kids that basically just use DA to post actual screenshots and official art, often unedited, of shows (and that's not even taking into account professional artists using DA as a portfolio and posting official art they worked on). I don't know how likely they are to get in trouble but the fact they didn't even consider this is baffling.

[@burksaurus9410]

Yeah, I really agree especially with a lot of users posting screenshots of shows from different media instead of making their own artwork which can get them in serious trouble by different film studios like Warner Bros to Paramount Pictures; gaming studios like Nintendo or Sega; or manga, novel, storybook, and comics industry and different artists. But this is getting out of hand because I've been a member since 2014, and I hate what is happening to the website since Wix took over.

[@brainbomb.]

They will be sued.

[@sleepy.timaeus.arts.]

I hope it does come back to bite DA in the ass. serves them right to try fucking over their artists like that

[@EagleTimberWolf]

Ya' know, I used to cringe at the amount of traced Lion King and Balto bases I both made and used in my early teens, but the idea of that sort of thing potentially getting DA sued makes me feel slightly better lmao They deserve it after the bullshit they've been pulling

[@victimvideo_]

It's a genuine shame - I'd been genuinely considering moving fully to DA after all the weird stuff going on with twitter. I'm happy that I haven't put anything up there yet, and I'm only really using DA to join CS groups currently. I guess we're going to Tumblr, let's hope they don't fuck up tremendously any time soon...

[@usagiislost]

toyhouse is super great for species so tbh i dont see the appeal with DA anyway

[@kittygirl0872]

@@usagiislost yeah but we need codes to go into toyhouse And we people outside of toyhouse don't know any codes

[@usagiislost]

@@kittygirl0872 I have bunches if you're interested!

[@lemmonade._.]

dude trust me tumbler is just as bad -a tumbler user

[@bruisedfruit]

@@lemmonade._. what makes you say that?

[@scorcher69]

we should all get revenge by feeding the ai a lot of sonic inflation foot ms paint cringe XD

[@carolscarlette]

oh my god, malicious compliance lmao 💀

[@barbi111]

🤣😂Love this idea

[@barbi111]

This is actually a good idea!!

[@blackberrycheese2928]

Nice idea!

[@BJLopez-gc9fg]

GENIUS

[@btabtab1079]

This should literally be illegal, like, I do compsci and stuff like this makes me not wanna go into industry. Ethics is not taught until later on in the course and sometimes not at all. Things like this probably wouldn't have happened provided that compsci and AI students actually got taught ethics💔

[@bechnokid]

Full-time programmer here to say I completely agree with you!

[@anonymousart8202]

Wow- this reminded me I took graphic design as a course in Highschool (I know they are different still) and the FIRST THING we were taught was how to remove watermarks with photoshop. There really is little teaching of ethics in creative industries which is not great because if people violate copyright without even knowing hat they are doing is wrong the law won't care and they are still going to possibly be subjected to legal proceedings and fines.

[@clarehidalgo]

The Ethics class my University required everyone to take only really talked about Aristotle's works on Ethics/Golden Mean, a little about Confucianism to compare to Aristotle, Communitarianism vs Individualism, Fake empathy vs witnessing vs vicarious trauma. Not the ethics of our specific Majors

[@candicraveingcloude2822]

probably cause it's too expensive to teach and it's all for budget saving. 🙄

[@anonymouse257]

Utterly ridiculous. Illegal? Is it illegal for artists to look at other artists to get inspiration and learn and refine their own style? Is it wrong for people to study the old masters and incorporate their brush strokes and colors and techniques into their own. You people don’t seem to have a CLUE about how most AI work. They’re creating something completely NEW that is very roughly based on elements of other people’s work, which is EXACTLY what ALL artists do. EVERY artist does the same. Every single one. Period. You’re ALL inspired by other artists. A lot of you even deliberately try to copy other artists’ elements. Maybe it’s just the way they do eyelashes. Maybe it’s a color palette they use. Maybe it’s the brushes they use. This is what AI does. They’re not copying and pasting another artist’s exact work into the new work for pete’s sake. It’s not like they’re just creating a mashup of other artist’s work. It’s INSPIRATION, just like you all do. And don’t give me the BS about needing permission, because I can pretty much guarantee that almost NONE of you went to the artists who inspired you and said, “Can I please use the way you draw eyelashes in my own work if I credit you?” 😂

[@dracuonex]

I honestly would leave DA but my problem is, there's not that many platforms to try and grow as an artist at this point. There's the twitter issue going on, so Im hesitant to make one of those. I *had* an Instagram but they randomly banned me and I didn't even *do* anything. DA has been the only constant for a long time and I'm making an attempt on tumblr. Eventually going to try other things as well, but.. people just really like making things fucking difficult for people who want to remotely make an attempt and try doing *anything* with their art, no matter if they say they 'care' or not..

[@Queenmoreta]

I have the same issue, I still had a small shred of faith in DA and I have more followers/friends on there but this recent event is crap and really throws a spanner at my shred of faith. Instagram put me off as a reliable place for my art because I found just how garbage their system is for getting access back to your account, be it locked out or one of those problems you voiced in your comment! I heard they can be random and unfair with banning. So that doesn't give me much optimism for them either. Twitter I have one but don't use it, had debated starting to use it more often but garbage started up on there too!. I can't get on with Tumblr. It makes me wonder if artists should go use websites like Weasyl and Wysp. but I think those places are pretty dead these days.

[@Manbarrican]

I had some asshole steal some of my work on Tumblr to push it to Vapor95, I haven't posted art there since.

[@lupsarttime3615]

One thing about Tumblr is if you delete your post and it has been reblogged, the reblog is essentially a copy and deleting the original post doesn't delete the subsequent copies/reblogs.

[@UltrEgoVegeta]

​@@lupsarttime3615 don't post stupid take you know you will need to delet?

[@lupsarttime3615]

@@UltrEgoVegeta I have no idea what you're trying to say.

[@luckypoyo]

According to DeviantArt, they claim that they haven't and will not use any art with permissions to do so to add to any data sets of any AI including DreamUp. That being said, the fact their intention was to not opt out everyone automatically because they couldn't "make the choice for the artists to have their art removed" is total BS. The fact they still want anything to do with an unethical AI based on Stable Diffusion isn't right and a lot of artists have peaced out from DA. I'm soooo glad I stopped posting in 2013. I still had over 100 submissions to fix though which took me a few hours to check each and every box. Only after massive backlash did they stop waving the AI in front of everyone but they still wanted to do their dumb llama contest thing.

[@Spooky_kimono]

I remember when DeviantArt added an art theft thing, but you had to pay for it- why not allow all their users to safely share their art without theft 😀

[@JewelWildmoon]

Exactly 😭 That was the thing that let people know if their art was being used as NFTs, right?

[@Red_MOON187]

I can't see how this will not drive away users.

[@justinneuroth1371]

Except this isn't stealing people's artwork it's using it to learn to create its own unique artwork. Just how you look at someone else's references and then you learn from those lol.....

[@trra7785]

@@justinneuroth1371 it's not "someone" using other people's art as references if that "someone" is a robot.

[@UnvisibleGirl]

I used DA for the NFT protection they had, but soon as I learnt about this I just closed my account, It feels like a betrayal of what they were projecting they stood for.

[@JewelWildmoon]

Tbh I was kind of expecting they might fall into doing something stupid involving AI or art theft considering the fact that even the NFT protection was something you'd have to pay for to actually use instead of it just being an option for all artists.

[@iluminumfalcon8619]

I mean why quite if people where stupid enough to Buy NFTs in the first place like stickers.

[@RibbonRoulette]

The extra insult to injury was them posting their stupid AI llamas on their Twitter feed after the whole ordeal. Just trucking along like nothing happened, and doubling down. I deleted all my work, canceled my core subscription, and deleted my entire account. If it wasn't so sad and distressing, it would almost be comical that they betrayed the trust of the community for this.

[@faerie-starvartvlog]

I was planning to leave Deviantart after being there for fifteen years, good thing my gallery was already cleared out in 2021 before the AI announcement. Seeing this was a final straw as I'm deactivating my account in January and moving to other sites(Inkblot, Tumblr, etc.) so I can finally move on. I wanted to give my watchers a chance to see my links to other sites and say goodbye before leaving. The worst part is that I'll lose over 400 watchers that I had to work so hard for over a decade and a half and had to start all over to other sites. Not to mention that the new AI users on Deviantart are able to earn over a thousand watchers/faves, etc., and even get themselves a Daily Deviation after being on the site for less than a month. While I and everyone else it took us forever to do that, only to get screwed over for everyone favoring AI. Even people who have the accounts for years but never posted anything are now able to support and submit their AI art while calling us artists 'crybabies' and 'greedy assholes'(commissions). That's when I learned that DA no longer cares about us actual artists, they rather favor art thieves who will take a lazy way out and I no longer want to stay on that site that supports art theft. Sorry if I came off as whiny, I'm just annoyed at Deviantart's direction and I can't wait to leave that horrible site.

[@Tevi_L7151]

there is no guarantee that the art will not be stolen for the A.I. library 😢

[@SkippysBacon]

Your story is EXACTLY what the problem is with AI art. And captures why it's so upsetting to have OUR art be the fuel for this machine that cranks out "easy art"

[@Roxie_ET]

A warning that Tumblr is now partnering with AI training models, and there's an option in your account settings to opt out of your stuff being used for it. I'm disappointed in them but decided I'm staying on Tumblr. At this point no place is 100% safe for art unless you have Glaze or Nightshade

[@whatteamwildcats4033]

I find myself thanking my lucky stars that I was too chicken to actually post my art anywhere, and especially not deviantart

[@missingnotheglitchmon]

Chickens are descendants of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. You pretty much called yourself brave for understandably defying DeviantArt.

[@dragonusmolamola4140]

@@missingnotheglitchmon of course missingno says the most based stuff ever

[@KashimusPrime]

They basically shot themselves in the foot, IE broke their own TOS on copyright by making this AI Generator.

[@KlarehsArt]

All of these AI Programs are literally lording over artists the fact that they cannot afford legal fees.

[@idavis094]

Additional info, they were streaming on their Twitch, artists found out and tried to put in their anger towards this issue. Their channel, 1: had follower only chat enabled also 2: new followers were not allowed to chat so a lot of artists were not able to voice their outrage and opinions on the bs dA was pulling. Also apparently even though you opt out as default, there's apparently a form you have to fill out and have approved by dA to prevent them from scrapping your account. Basically the opt out only prevents 3rd parties, it doesn't mean dA themselves can't take your work and put it into a dataset. Also even if you fill out that form, it does not mean dA will approve of you fully telling them "no you aren't allowed to use my work for your training data." I for one am extremely upset they pulled this bs and am now in the process of deleting all deviantions and deactivating my account.

[@RachBurns2]

dA never puts itself on the refusal lists of things. Totally agree with the frustration and working on getting my account deleted. May it go quickly for you!

[@trashcatlinol]

There's the tos hook! I knew they said they could use your art for advertising, and I had a feeling they would use it to pull something like this. Glad I only gave them fanart and drug my feet on making my dA account my professional portfolio last year. They can have my fan crap. Hope it gets them sued.

[@h0neybee]

It's because of things like this that KZbin and Instagram are my main platforms. Not that they're much better 😭

[@lana.pat1308]

At least insta doesn't cooperate with ai or nfts....yet

[@naraku971]

No platform is safe these days.

[@sleepy.timaeus.arts.]

@fartsmella you dont need a social media platform to be an artist, depending on what you want to do. if you just wanna share your art with your friends, you can text them or have a discord server. if you want to go into the industry, you dont really need social media for that bc you can build a portfolio without social media. dont give up just because a lot of social media sucks.

[@sleepy.timaeus.arts.]

it's not as popular right now, but artfol is a platform made by artists, for artists.

[@nonyabusiness3619]

@fartsmella Please don't.

[@thaumana8489]

The sad fact is that this doesn't stop reposters from uploading other artists' work on DA anyway, and likely not flagging it for opt-out. Because this site allows such an AI system, there will be always the risk that sooner or later your own work will still end up in the database within seconds due to the upload of other art thieves anyway. What an insane mess.

[@mal2ksc]

But if it isn't tagged with your name, the AI won't be able to reference it when asked to imitate you. It will possibly become associated with the reposter though, which is much more insulting.

[@nicoleartist9803]

Sounds like its time for a civil lawsuit

[@deltaxcd]

Not gonna work there are no laws that forbid use of images for AI training

[@glowingcrowns1692]

@@deltaxcdour art is automatically registered as copywritten. Using our art for the purpose of "training" is stealing. Or using without our consent. I didn't agree to my art training anything

[@deltaxcd]

​@@glowingcrowns1692 As I know the terms of fair use allow usage of content for ".... teaching, scholarship, or research." so obviously training falls into fair use category there is nothing said in the las that it is only allowed to be used for teaching humans. so it does not matter if you agree or not, your consent is not required.

[@SirDavid290]

@@deltaxcd But in this context, it is for commercial use.

[@deltaxcd]

@@SirDavid290 well fair use laws specifically say that it is ok to use any work without permission for learning (training) or research purposes nothing said about limiting it to human learning or that it can't be comercial so this means you can use it for training your AI

[@Snow-Willow]

KZbin hasn't been "for artists" for a long looong time now. This is just another brick in that wall between corpo DA and the actual artists who made the platform what it was.

[@nickyjamesonarttv]

💯

[@cuteykitsune]

I am kinda considering leaving DA at this point, but I will wait a little more to see how it plays out.

[@Persona_Random_]

As a beginner artist who wanted to start posting art online, this situation really sucks. Deviantart had always been a place where everyone could post regardless of their skill level. That now it's not safe is very sad. Not to mention that many artists were leaving twitter also because of the situation there... We need a new platform that is exclusively for posting art. At the moment, tumblr seems like the best option out of everything out there. It's not perfect though...

[@SotraEngine4]

Honestly Every time an AI image is used A cent should be given to the creator of every image used to train it

[@iblobliboo8501]

Can't all artists on DA make a big class action lawsuit against them?

[@KittMouri]

Seeing as how they violated their own terms, I would imagine so. It's something we would have to look into, though.

[@spambox3624]

Agree that it’s worth looking into. There’s also already a class action lawsuit against AI happening rn. Gotta do everything we can to send the message. Make exploiting artists as difficult as possible for them.

[@deltaxcd]

I don't think it violates the law in any way. even if it could be in theory there are no laws about AI so far.

[@KittMouri]

@@deltaxcd the operative phrase being, "so far". And they did violate their own terms with regard to use of user IP, so there is a case to be made here, even in lieu of AI laws. Laws will get made, but in the meantime, the suit can still move forward under the TOS being violated by the site, itself.

[@deltaxcd]

@@KittMouri I don't think they violated their tos in any way as nobody could even imagine that art will be sued for AI training and how that would be regulated. and we still have to wait for what laws will be made in that regard. Maybe in the future TOS will be updated to include AI training policies. But for now anyone is free to do that. Either way I think it is good opportunity to eliminate greedy human artists completely and replace them with AI, so nobody will be required topmay any commissions anymore, at some moment AI may be even able to produce movies and write stories eliminating entire entertainment industry.

[@Leporidaez]

not a damn place on the internet thats truely good for artists it looks like.

[@kittygirl0872]

Make a website only for yourself and your art Like yuumei Just sayin

[@jesterdays]

Newgrounds

[@Rainjojo]

Artfol

[@Leporidaez]

@@Rainjojo artfol is pretty okay but small. hopefully it grows more

[@retarded1651]

Pixiv

[@jenniferdupree6542]

IT TOTALLY drove me away. I actually purged my page seeing as it has been used but i'm not going to use it for sure now. Thanks for discussing this.

[@JewelWildmoon]

How do you check to see if any if your art has been used btw?

[@kinola3206]

I felt like they did something like this as an April Fool's prank a few years back. But in all honestly, it feels like dA is becoming a big joke these days. It all began with Eclipse...no categories for your work, strange layout that can put a strain on your eyes, Facebook/social media-esque feel, annoying reminders that never go away even when you want it to, no organization for browsing art of any kind, no respect for older members, no effort to listen to anyone who had genuine complaints or suggestions, and finally no idea what they are doing anymore. They didn't keep the "toggle" button so you could switch between the old layout and Eclipse (Wikipedia has a similar feature, believe me). A lot of people I've met on dA over the years are either inactive or have deactivated their accounts. The very first deviant I started watching when I first got my account back in 2007 is going to shut down their account after 19 years. 19 years. Who is dA even catering to anymore, apart from themselves? It feels like every big website and corporation is only looking out for themselves and expecting everyone else to suck it up.

[@MidnightCapricorn2696]

This wasn't exactly the reason I stopped using DA (I'd basically already drifted), but it was the driving force to me sharing sharing some of my other social medias and completely abandoning my account. Not only that, Apparently DA supports NFTs? Idk, I wasn't around for that, but they do support Web3 (which is also blockchain-based, if I remember correctly). So, for being artist-friendly, they... really don't seem to be.

[@clarehidalgo]

I Drifted from DA. I remember when I was in High school the big DA scandal was that they hid in Terms and Conditions that they could sell people's art to 3rd parties for like tee-shirts and stuff and one artist only found out when they went to Hot Topic and saw their art on a shirt

[@StellarAshtynn]

Thank you for bringing this up, Celestia! I thought DeviantArt was doing good for its community, but this update genuinely angers me. I'm thinking about leaving it behind, I don't use it that much anyway lol-

[@tomboyjessie1352]

I don't blame you, I mostly use DA to talk to friends nowadays while most of my activities are around Tumblr and Pixiv.

[@StellarAshtynn]

@@tomboyjessie1352 Oh, I never head of Pixiv-

[@anthares96]

deviantart hasn't done a single good thing for its community since wix took over lol, every new "update" has actively made the site worse, though this is the first update to be straight-up illegal

[@StellarAshtynn]

@@anthares96 Wow, I didn't know that Wix took over, thank you for telling me that.

[@anthares96]

@@StellarAshtynn np! that's what the eclipse update was all about, wix bought dA and changed it to fit its soulless style

[@KittMouri]

This is incredibly upsetting. I've used DeviantArt for years and have a pretty extensive gallery. To know that they stole my art for the purposes of training a robot is extremely upsetting! I am tempted to remove everything in my gallery, but as an artist, I actually use the site for commissions and such. What's more, it seems as though they have already used my art to teach their AI, so it's not enough for them to stop, they need to remove the hijacked content and purge their AI library. This seems like something for a class action lawsuit. I think I'm going to have to migrate my work somewhere else, but since the damage has already been done, I'll leave what's posted up to advertise, but I won't be posting anything else until this gets sorted. In the meantime, I'm going to figure out how to move my art while still keeping images for people to see and decide if my art is something they would like to commission.

[@ghostlycircaea1049]

I was fuming when I first heard about all of this-I deactivated my current and previous account once I heard. Obviously its a bit too late to keep them out of my stuff, but for me it was more of a symbolic gesture. And it was also pretty cathartic. If anyone’s interested in alternatives, inkblot is pretty good so far!

[@devinsauls9137]

Now I see why it's called DeviantArt and I might have to delete my account ASAP!

[@VezukiCh]

Exellent analysis, as an artist, I do feel betraid by DA. I recommend everyone just start drawing stick figures and 'opt-in', leave faves and comments for those posts to give the AI 'popular' art to work with

[@JamesTDG]

God I hope DA's decision garners a fucking class action lawsuit. MY pixel art was used to train this FILTH of a digital construct and I know for a FACT my shit was likely used to help train it due to my relevance in the pixel art community (even if it isn't what seems like a lot, I am one of the rare few pixel artists that do upload to there...)

[@leftymcnally6913]

I recently had a friend do a bunch of AI options with my art, and of course she asked me first, so it was all good. Kinda' creepy, but cool in a way. I didn't hear the scuttlebutt on this until people started leaving, and at first I was like "What's the big deal?", but after watching this I'm starting to understand. Yeah, that's some Skynet level underhandedness. Thanks for the heads up

[@rdbrooks9306]

This is why I'm so afraid of posting my art anywhere like what am I supposed to do if it's stolen?! It makes me beyond upset art is one of the only things I really have or am able to do, and knowing that me sharing those hours of hard work in anyway could feed some AI trash so somebody can type it in and get that same work back for free seems the same as handing the person ready to shoot you a bullet :/ this is just a slap in the face and invalidation to all artists as a whole

[@noxiouschocolate9644]

I haven’t uploaded any of my art in years and recall seeing an image that looked suspiciously similar to an old piece I made as a gift, it wasn’t but I was so angry at the idea of someone tracing my pieces. It’s bad enough that back then da had a problem with art theft, but this makes it so much worse

[@deltaxcd]

yes that a great idea LOL never post any of your art anywhere keep it under your bed or buy good safe box :) even better just shred it after you draw it then you will be absolutely sure that nobody will ever steal it LOL

[@-ALRadeck]

I think this was pretty succinct on the explanation of what's gone down. Literally about 10 minutes ago left my account of 17 years on this over it, and might link to your video to help better explain my feelings on it, honestly. As of sunday night, it's just more lip service and pretending nothing happened. Even if they walk the whole thing back, the steps taken in the first place make me hesitant to ever come back.

[@AwokenArtist]

I was extremely devastated and disappointed to the point I broke down crying because Deviantart was my one and only art home I had settled in and i had the account for 19 years straight. i have witnessed what has happened on deviantart over the years in 2008 of what it used to have back then [both the good and bad] , made memories into the platform cause its where i met really good friends of mine on and it was the one site that pretty much became my art history and portfolio of all my works and such ive done. i posted so much art, photography, literature works and so much more. i have heard time and time again on people complaining about deviantart and even some that i also have issues with but i still stayed. the final nail in the coffin with this just made me just break down because i dont know where else to even go anymore from here. I still have so so so much amount of work I posted over the years i have to save because i dont know how many i even have saved on my hard drive or usb and i rather be safe then sorry. just- this fucking infuriated me and i felt absolutely betrayed and pissed. I thought DA cared when they came up and made a thing for to notify people about "hey theres something being sold as a NFT and we may think its yours / something that looks or such like yours on DA thats posted. would you like to report it or no?" was awesome and promising, just this AI bullshit made my blood boil to a violent degree. im so tired of the Ai shit, im so fricken exhausted cause every artist is trying their upmost best to fight against this AI shinanigans with all of their might even if its exhausting its so infuriating. If Deviantart actually gave a shit they wouldnt of put AI in the site what so ever at all. no one had a say in the matter with this not even ones who abandoned DA, forever cannot access their accounts, those who passed away which makes me so mad. yes now they have everyone opt out but the damage already has been done to the point no one recommends DA anymore. whoever the hell is running the site- good fricken job you did it you basically killed the site you nincompoops. good god. im still...processing the entireity of it and im desperately trying to find other good art sites. instagram is shitty for its algorithm, Artfol is still baby and their very responsive to the community to improve and listen which is awesome, and their planning to make a site artfol for those who rather post on the pc then mobile which is understandable. we dont know when it'll launch [im on its discord to keep up with it]. Art station i have seen been thrown around...but i had to delete my account during the whole NFT fiasco blow up on twitter because- Art station was doing NFTs and it made me nope the fuck outta there. [if anyone has any correct info on the site lemme know?] I have seem peeps throw small art sites like inkblot which- i dont know too much to know if its a good site. im still desperately looking around to find good art sites...but its so fucking sad...and disapointing,....and depressing that DA just- basically screwed themselves over by being. so. fucking. stupid by doing this.... my god what where they even thinking- [actually i dont think they were they blindly think its a good idea without doing research. but thats asking too much. excuse the saltness]

[@sentry8992]

Why don't you just get your own website? None of these social media platforms cares about content creators. Even if you had a successful following on other platforms, you still should be steering them to your own site that you control.

[@AwokenArtist]

​@@sentry8992 I have planned to make my own website itself but thats when I have the stable income enough to do so to be comfortable enough to keep a website of mine up. So far my only sites I have is my carrd websites of mine with showcase my works, videos, even commission info and social platforms im on, my twitch, and my ko-fi. I still have to continue to posts on the platforms I have available to me [no matter how bad it is sadly cause- if i want my work to be out there and be known and seen I have to rely on them.] cause if i just rely on my website alone, thats not gonna get me far at all considering my following isnt really big. so it makes things pretty difficult but its a slow climb for me. I still hope for the day that there will be sites thats very friendly for artists and creators alike, and not feel screwed over cause of algorithm and other nonsense.

[@BaconSizzleWasTaken]

I aint reading allat but good for you or sorry that happened

[@mariellewinks]

It's such a shame cause I was genuinely thinking about posting stuff on there. I've been on and off on the site for years and I literally just got back on a few weeks ago. It's just so hard to grow on social media nowadays. Some platforms are either dead, going through some controversy, or they're brand new so there's not much users.

[@rashmishanker2342]

As a deviantart artist i wasn't aware of this thank you for bringing it you my attention

[@biomuseum6645]

Remember kids, ai makes you a real artist just like fifa makes you a real soccer player

[@SleMels135]

Damn Deviant art really hit a new low, is very depressing 😥

[@wheelsndealz]

I hope some of the really big art channels actually talk about this. I haven't seen anything yet. we've seen them complain about ai art and people stealing/using their art, but I think since they typically aren't on there they probably don't care or it doesn't affect them so aren't on their radar. the thing is, the only thing that will matter is the consumer. And unfortunately, most people can't even tell the difference between ai art and real art, or they just don't care. so without the big influencers pointing it out and taking a stance against it, people won't care and nothing will change. there's already a huge increase of ai art being posted on it now and it's not being tagged as ai. And I can't find any way to hide AI art from being shown, like they said it would be. but again, not that it would matter if they don't get tagged anyways.

[@DarkTripods07]

As someone who's been on for almost 21 years on DA i slowly watched the site care less and less about the artist who pour their heart and soul into artworks And now this is the final nail to the coffin.

[@minakinna]

The way I panicked to go opt myself out the day DreamUp was announced... I'm glad I haven't posted my most recent stuff on there. It's honestly disrespectful for dA to even put their hands on artists' works like this. They grabbed onto them as if they're already their property. It's disgusting.

[@TonyFed]

Same thing Sam Bankman-Fried with peoples crypto deposits. Seems like we should really question the intentions, word, and ethics of companies that promise to “support” communities that actually provide the value that these companies want to exploit.

[@GwrachSeren]

Deviant art drove me away by removing my sense of community with the eclipse update. This makes me glad I no longer use it. I should just delete my account though

[@tendollah156]

I honestly don't mind if they use my work to generate something completely new as a reference. I myself find a bunch of inspiring good stuff that people generate with it but I think it should be watermarked in some way so they cant publish it as anything more than AI generated

[@rozalinkie]

It's like all social media wants to explode somehow

[@anonymousart8202]

RANT AHEAD: Deviantart was already on it's way out it will never be like how it used to in the earlier years when the user base was at it's peak. This is why I'm seriously considering Artfol as a up and coming platform with a small dev team I am really interested to see where their dev team takes it it seems like it might become a very good platform for artist! (I am hoping at least). I really wish as a artist I did not have to use the big social medias but what can we even do? Everyone uses them and if we want our art to be seen and make a profit we don't have a choice. -I don't like instagram because of it's algorithm and when you report someone 99.9% of the time they don't do shit. -I don't like Tumblr because fuck Tumblr it gave me childhood trauma, I was bullied on there for my art as a young pre-teen after someone mistakenly took copied stolen artwork that was a copy of mine and uploaded it bashing the character I nearly stopped drawing and I left that fandom for over 6 years. Besides that Tumblr's flagging system I hear is a little wonky like you post shoulders and get flagged for nudity. I imagine perhaps Tumblr has changed over the years but that app still causes me genuine anxiety so sorry Tumblr users. -Deviantart is on it's way out this might be the nail in the coffin. -TikTok is the eight circle of hell. Just. NO. - Amino... OH BOY- I am on amino but I would never dare post my art there. It's so easy for people to steal your work and any image you post on there gets this green watermark bar at the bottom that you cannot opt out of that leaves a poor taste in my mouth. Also the demographic is entirely too young to be using that platform they bumped the age up to 16 but still you can literally get Pourn adds on there and this app is not rated for at least 18 year olds. Also you are at the mercy of amino leaders and curators so if you get into a bad one with drama it will be HELL. Also team amino doesn't do jack shit. It is a good place to connect with other people in similar interests and fandoms but it's still not a great environment for artists in general. There are some art aminos I am sure and I am sure they can be fun but in general the platform does not cater to artists. -What the fuck is even going on with Twitter at this point and I also despise that bird app because of how many people just sit on there with their keyboards at the ready to cancel you before you can explain yourself, without full context and regardless whether or not a person deserves it. There are communities of artists on Twitter that are genuinely lovely but I also just don't want to potentially subject myself to that hostile of a environment just yet without careful consideration. Though is it just me or did all the really shitty people jump from Twitter and IG to TIktok? -Facebook is a nightmare for artist because of all these shitty pop up shops that steal your artwork off of there to sell on their products without royalties or credit, also Facebook can technically just take your stuff and use it whenever they want it's in their TOS. - I have genuinely thought about starting a KZbin channel because I also like video making and think it could be a fun hobby but of course it has it's own whole host of issues with demonetization, AI filters flagging videos for "not following TOS", the algorithm etc... - There are also lesser known ones like VK, Pixiv etc... but I don't really fit in with these communities I can't speak the languages and I don't want to take up space on platforms for people in these communities. Like it feels like artists have NO WHERE to go in the mainstream anymore without fear of reprisal from platform management or being forced to grind out art at a inhuman speed because of algorithms leading to burn out and exhaustion. Not to mention if you are a artists who wants to sell NSFW work online you have like ZERO options. Twitter is the last safe haven for those artists and it's still not great and you have Patreon too but some people won't fork over for a monthly subscription and just want to do a one time commission or just view it as "too out of the way" and "too many hoops to jump through". So I guess I have to give the bird app a little credit for that but it's still not much better. An I am not even going to start with payment services like PayPal and how they fuck over artists. So I am really REALLY hoping for Artfol at this point so I would encourage artists to maybe give it a go or keep your eyes on it's development if you are not satisfied with having to make sacrifices for these huge platforms. Am I being too picky or do some other artist feel this way? Of course some of these are my own personal biases and opinions but let me know if you have thoughts / platform suggestions etc...

[@v4n1ty92]

Wow i actually read through all of that. Word of mouth is how ive always gotten commissions, and i like it that way, because social media is an unnecessary stresser. And I'm a traditional artist so doing a commission for someone hundreds of miles away from me isnt as easy as just sending an email with an image attachment. Word of mouth is what works for me

[@anonymousart8202]

@@v4n1ty92 I am glad you found something that works for you because yes social media is so stressful. I mainly do digital art and I don't live in a great area for my artwork to be marketed so I have to rely on socials unfortunately. I also try to market through word of mouth though I don't find I personally get a lot of success with it.

[@AzumiCoyote]

So think I, plus DeviantArt is the place where I stared my art career when I was 17 years old and I still have got negative memories of NSFW purge from 2018 on Tumblr. I also don't like Instagram for the algorithm and the fact of undealt problem with art stealers and reposters on this site. I think Pillowfort can be a future, considering the fact is NSFW art friendly and it's funded by users :)

[@anonymousart8202]

@@AzumiCoyote That's interesting I had no idea pillow fort was funded by it's users! I have heard it mentioned in passing before and I think I will do more research into it too. If it will turn out to be a art platform that is better for artists in the long run I would love to be a part of that.

[@AzumiCoyote]

@@anonymousart8202 I can send you key to registration on the site for free :)

[@amachii_art]

I had 12 years of artwork in it. And to be honest? I've decided to remove every single artwork I had in it. There was a lingering fear when I remember seeing my notifs and saw the DA is "promoting" AI art on their platform just a few weeks before this fiasco. I rarely upload there anyways but I'm keeping my account there just to have my artist name just be there. Even if they change whatever or add a more plausible way for this, I undoubtedly feel that AI art is still part of their platform no matter what.

[@Karymon-1999]

If we can't take our art away from getting copied maybe we should break the system and only post on purpose awful art so the AI only makes awful pieces, you know, like those paint anime bases back from 2009

[@nangbaby]

As someone who can't draw to save my life, I'll gladly contribute.

[@mal2ksc]

But then it will become fashionable to suck at the fundamentals of your craft, like punk rock. Actual trained musicians had to "sloppy it up" because it was the way the audience demanded.

[@nangbaby]

@@mal2ksc As someone who hopelessly sucks at the fundamentals, I welcome this day.

[@hiddenbruh]

I had an acc that i lost the password for a few months ago with a decent amount of art so rip that. But honestly its a deal breaker for me that a know art platform that was made for _artist_ is openly supporting and developing something that is meant to replace them (yes its there to replace us). The positive change left the moment they add ai tbh, like how can we trust that a little tick mark is going to stop them from stealing more.

[@dragonstardraws]

I had no idea that DA was doing that! I'd happily let SOME of the art I've placed there be used but some of it I barely got the courage to post, and the fact that removing it from the list wont actually remove it from the initial model is upseting to say the least. I don't plan on leaving the platform anytime soon (unless something even crazier happens that manages to drive my forgiving nature away...) but I think they messed up big time.

[@kanyny9377]

My DA account was already dusty, but this thing made me remember my password, wipe my gallery and deactivate, even if it was already too late and my art was already trained on. Even it they'd somehow back out of all this AI stuff completely, they ruined the trust of their userbase probably beyond repair. I don't see myself back on DA in nearest future.

[@jinxmu07]

Thank god I deleted my DeviantArt account months ago.

[@TheArtMentor]

Man I was so sad to hear about this. I’m not leaving DA, simply because every other website already did this. It’s a bit of a scapegoat for Artist rage over AI, isn’t it? I mean NovelAI was trained on Pixiv without their community ever knowing or even having any opt out feature. There needs to be litigation and legal precedence to protect artists

[@d3rkangel4tlfl1ght2]

Here's what DA should do then. They need to provide a monetary compensation to every creator who's art was used. And for every image that is still included in it the AI a royalty was long as the AI that was trained with it is used.

[@bonnietelocole6777]

What's funny is that had the update rolled out with the opt-in automatically turned off, I would've actively gone back to give my consent for my art to be used for the AI. I don't mind my art being used under normal circumstances, as long as credit is given when and where it's needed. Not just for me, but for others too. It's when you start disrespecting my fellow artists and denying their right to give consent to these things that makes me mind when my work is used without my explicit written permission. Using my art for anything without direct permission is a privilege, one that I will happily take back if you disrespect my fellow artists. I'm unhappy that they've used my work, not because I didn't want it used, but because of the way they got their hands on everyone's work. It's scummy, and completely out of line. If it was possible, I would take my work back from the AI, but I know I can't, so I'll just continue to not post on DA like I have been.

[@indiecrowarts]

I’m really loving the variety of art community related content, as an artist who tends to avoid large communities of all types (I prefer enjoying things/media by myself or with close friends) I like being able to peek my head into the online art scene through these videos- it gives me the information and clarity without having to view/interact with the discourse myself. Keep it up Paige 🎉 ♥️ 👏

[@egail]

7:50 "based on their rules, they have openly infringed upon the intellectual rights of every artist on their platform" except they probably havent. last time i checked, dA has it listed in their eula that theyre allowed to use any material uploaded to their platform however they want to. sadly, even if they are definitely in the wrong morally, theyre probably on safe ground legally.

[@shybie2798]

Ngl, I don't think they reacted harshly to dA, what they did was absolutely deplorable and they NEED to be held accountable. Every artist who used deviantart in the past years have every right to be absolutely upset by this. We trusted them to do the right calls when it comes to protecting our art cause this is one of the few remaining art sites we can actually use for art archiving and they used the archives WITHOUT PERMISSION. They broke our trust, if anything I believe we didn't react loud enough.

[@lordfuzzycat1176]

Agreed 100%

[@AnuraArtz]

i've been taking a very long hiatus from posting my art on social media because of mental health reasons, and i haven't even opened deviantart for months and was completely unaware this was going on until i saw this video i honestly don't even know what i want to do i'm definitely never posting any new art on there ever, but i don't even know if i should just delete my account entirely or just put a disclaimer saying i've left the platform i'm honestly just kind of in shock ;-;

[@KatietheKreator]

AI art may be frightening, but it doesn’t have the same handmade quality of physical art and messes up a lot so you can tell it isn’t real people. Unfortunately, AI art is getting better and makes it harder to tell it from real art, so some people feel like there’s no point in making real art or getting art commissioned. The difference between AI and a real artist is you can tell the real artist to actually change something or try to do a specific thing, and AI is cold and emotionless and doesn’t care.

[@lordfuzzycat1176]

Yeah, the only problem is that you can attribute that growth to all of the stolen artworks being fed to it though. If they did this on ethical practices, they would never have the time or money to make the ai as good as it is now.

[@AshiesCorner]

I honestly knew nothing about this until seeing this video. I don't know where else I could move my fractal art to besides an actual website and portfolio.... Sorry. I have had poetry and art stolen from me in the past....but this takes the cake. This video is really making me think upon what I want to do with my fractal art now.

[@mostcoolio]

At this point I dont even know where I can post my art on a platform that is good for artists, if anyone's got any suggestions I'm open to hearing them

[@kittygirl0872]

Newsground Pillowfort Artstation Pixiv Artfol.

[@AwesomeYena]

Sneezyart

[@Heathiekins]

This is a very helpful bit of information, and it saves me SO much time on research! I hope you continue to make more of these, Celestia! Thank you!

[@Luferife]

Yes please keep doing this kind of content, I was unaware about this and your explanation was easy to get! And I really enjoy hear you while i'm drawing! :D

[@azucar1237]

Imagine being an art website and making a choice that is harmful specifically to artists,,,,

[@birdiexoxo]

It’s so sad that the number one best art platform in the early 2000’s/2010’s has destroyed itself so fully. If they went back to how it was in say 2009, I think everyone would come back. Same with Tumblr. I don’t understand these absolute media giants just absolutely destroying themselves smh

[@goblinwisdom]

GoT tO mAkE prOFiTs 📈

[@Krashin_Through]

Thank you for doing the art news videos! You make the information easy to understand, while having an actual understanding of the community it’s affecting.

[@Ninjacatmuffin]

I've seen DA do tons of crappy decisions in recent years, but this one takes the cake. I've also seen tons of artists on Twitter scramble to protect their work when the announcement was made. Heck, even when they made opt out the default, I still saw a lot of suspicion. A lot of my early work and friendships are on DA, so it's a shame. On the bright side, this finally got me to delete the deviations on long abandoned DA account.

[@meikahidenori]

i left DA long time ago after how Jark was treated, they stopped doing weekly maintenance and made art groups. shame too as I was a senior member and just watching new things being developed that was awesome be handled so badly just.... *shakes head* they are terrible at implementing anything 😅

[@dissonanceparadiddle]

Aw man. I was thinking of finally moving over there. Getting tired of Instagram

[@nataliapersonalelecalice7571]

As someone who started their artistic journey with DeviantART when I was almost 13 years old (by that I mean since 2014) , I am really disappointed that the platform I grow up with would fall from graze. I boycotted when they announced that the Eclipse redesign was going to be permanent, deleting their previous, more stable and quicker to navigate design. (Especially since Eclipse is buggy and slow at that time) I expanded my platforms beyond DA during that boycott. While I did returned to the platform some months later, this event now made me stop DA definitely. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Really disappointed...

[@UsaWusa]

Agreed on all points! I've been with DA a long time, haven't been active in a LONG time.. so it was an easy choice to close my account after this.

[@TheHitsubasa]

Great. I was considering returning to dA. Guess it’s time to delete my entire account which includes fanart for other users. I had most of my account in storage for years then took it out of storage. I wonder if it being in storage and not visible to public still means it gets fed into this AI. OOP nvm just heard the option to opt out was added

[@mahnstroffan]

Well considering they added the option after the fact? They still used your art. Opting out is just gonna protect your art in the future.

[@TheHitsubasa]

@@mahnstroffan yeah 😩

[@ghostshepherd6749]

I had no idea this was going on. I haven't been on DA in a years. Thank you. Liked and subbed.

[@mahnstroffan]

How unfortunate. My country human OC is now sucked into an AI Art program 😭 Oh well, I haven’t used it since then anyhow so now I’m just gonna post to insta.

[@magicalgalaxylavender]

That sucks so much I wish there was a way to remove it 😞

[@caitlinsnowfrost8244]

Opting out of the AI art program is now the default.

[@siilverREAL]

@@caitlinsnowfrost8244 the AI is still trained to use the art in the original datasets pre-disabling

[@ruendheart]

Good glad

[@waterworks_yes]

completely unrelated to the video, but what are all of you working on? most people who watch celestia are also artists after all. feel free to share your current projects in the replies of this comment and i’ll try respond if possible! :D

[@h0neybee]

I've been working on a ton of videos for KZbin, mostly animatics! In fact I uploaded one yesterday! I've also been putting a lot of work into my webcomic, and a short film I'm planning to create :]

[@lalas181]

I'm trying to revamp an old book idea I had when I was like 13/14 into an actually-decent comic. It's taking a while. Even aside from having to actually flesh out characters and make designs and stuff, there was just... I sure did write all that I have to work from for the old book as a 13-year-old anime fan.

[@dividedfox6161]

Trying to make an animation but failing. Horribly failing.

[@dissonanceparadiddle]

I'm trying to get back into hand drawn animation. It's not going super well. Gotta find my tracing table

[@waterworks_yes]

@@h0neybee sounds like a lot of hard work! good luck: don’t push yourself too much and remember to take breaks every now and then ^^

[@faelancaerwynn8664]

Deviantart's constant changes to the interface without getting judgement from users beforehand, and their refusal to handle things such as untagged fetish art or even stolen art, already long since destroyed my trust in the platform. I'd been thinking about going back, but the fact they did that when they no doubt KNOW the issues with AI "art", and did it without consulting the users in the slightest, has made my decision for me. i'd been on the site on and off since 2008, and i'll miss it, but it's not worth it anymore.

[@WikiSnapper]

I hadn't heard about this at all. Thank you for sharing.

[@Taradoxxi]

I’m old enough to remember when there was a scandal, maybe 10 years back, involving deviant art selling prominent creators works to companies like Hot Topic without the awareness or compensation of the original creators. And this was allowed under the DA terms of service at the time. So while this is abhorrent behavior, I’m not really that shocked.

[@jewelgamesminecraft1193]

This thing with AI is so so bad for all artists as a whole and I wish it would just disappear, and it SUCKS that DA is using it as well now too, especially since it's my biggest and pretty much only source of income as a freelance artist, so they have now directly hurt my income and how i pay for bills and live. Its also sad cause Ive had people tell me that these AI image generators shouldn't be judged so quickly, but it is becoming a HUGE HUGE problem for working artists who need the money to live or who even do it as a hobby and enjoy getting paid to make people things with the skills they built up over years of working with it

[@jujuoof174]

I honestlu really like that format of videos!!

[@Vagabondwitchh]

Deviantart stated in an update that they did not and will not use art submitted to their platform for their Ai, or any Ai. Still, as a DA user i'm still pissed off.

[@93lozfan]

Opting out wouldn't necessarily mean that your art won't be used because DA isn't really fixing the art theft issue.

[@BarKeegan]

I’ll say the same thing I said in reaction to Goth Ross’s video: Maybe I don’t understand why every artist doesn’t just burn the bridge and go elsewhere because I’ve never signed up to Deviant Art… But someone’s going to have to explain to me, why the site seems like it has all the power when the art is the life blood. Surely those in charge should be grovelling at this stage

[@tonybenson82]

It's because there really isn't anywhere else to go that isn't a burning platform itself. AI art has the possibility to drive out artists of business. If you can have something quick and free or very cheap, you would pick that over someone having to handcraft it with possible mistakes and over a long time (a day or more wait) and probably more than $5 commission. This is bad because the companies could charge $5 for AI art compared to the artist who would charge $20. This could either force the artist to have lower prices, which would make them get a new job as they can't keep customers or get enough money. When there is barely any artist who can make a living off art, AI art will probably increase (the original 20 dollars) but it can pump out images faster than artists while using artists' hard work to make money off their original style and thought of art. In other words: Alienation from art (which shouldn't even be a thing).

[@BarKeegan]

@@tonybenson82 well, I’m free range, il, be selling my art as a delicacy

[@ruperterskin2117]

Right on. Thanks for sharing.

[@montyturner6511]

Great video man. DA felt that burn. And rightfully so. Hope they continue to feel it more too.

[@LuneraSkii]

I'm so glad I deleted my DeviantArt account 😅 I didn't need it since they had something about a membership payment 💀

[@elvismartinez9067]

Is there anything an artist can do to protect against AI art?

[@magicalgalaxylavender]

Add noise to your art is one way to protect your self add posting lower quality pictures to socials could help too it makes the Pixels harder to read

[@elvismartinez9067]

@@magicalgalaxylavender noise?

[@Mente_Fugaz]

@@magicalgalaxylavender I am sorry to inform you that this has already been denied, there is no type of noise that you can add to your drawings that the program cannot automatically filter in its learning.

[@Riku_nkmr]

You can't, AI doesn't see the way we do. People just feed it raw data which it interprets and spits out as an image. It's not laying over several images on top of each other and tracing them. One way to think of it is handing the AI a couple of papers with 0s and 1s, which it interprets with its algorithm, and prints out on a new paper an image humans can interpret. This is why ai bros claim ai don't copy paste and only make new things. It can only output what it is given though, so it's essentially copying either way, but they'll never tell you that.

[@MugiHours]

Don't post publicly online. If the AI can see it, the AI will scrape it.

[@LoryplayKD]

I hope some people come together and make a good website for art, commissions and such. Like imagine stuff like da, toyhouse, art fight, patron all combined and under some protection against ai.. I can only wish upon such thing, I got no clue about programming

[@Wingedshadowwolf]

This is news to me! Thank you for posting this.

[@EdenTheArtist]

Man, that sucks! I only really have a following on deviantart and have had generally okay experiences with it, but I guess with the rise of AI art art websites just aren’t safe anymore, gonna have to move to insta or something as my main :/

[@morislucidstories2699]

I'm very divided on what I want to do. I don't what them using my work to train AI, but I also don't want to delete everything. I like going back and rereading the conversations I had there. I grew a lot thanks to the dA community back in the day.

[@RubykonCubes3668]

Same, and I just learned about all of this. 😅🥲

[@xheralt]

You can do what Deviant Shiniez (Stjepan Šejić, he of "Sunstone" fame) did...replace the artwork itself with a picture of, say, a potato to keep the conversation threads intact, but have the valuable artwork itself gone.

[@vampritt]

DeviantArt 2012 : we let our user generated picture for people to admire DeviantArt 2022: our AI steal all our user's picture, train on them and let other people admire the generated PIRATED ART from our user base EXCELLENT !!!

[@UndeadVogel_]

i've heard (from word of mouth) of someone who was involved with DreamUp in some way that: 1) DA is *not* actually using your art ("DA is not using your art on the platform to train dream up.") 2) the AI opt-out is moreso to tell *other* AI's they have zero permission to use your art ("...what is the check box in the deviation? To tell all other AI's that they cannot and do not have permission to use your art.") 3) the journal the update was in was worded REALLY BADLY ("...the journal was super poorly written and the misinformation is insane.") however, i got this info in the form of a copy+paste, so if this person made a long chain with more info, i don't have that personally, i'm taking this with a grain of salt, even moreso that i have troubles reading if something is "good" or "bad", even moreso as what i DO know still somewhat makes no sense to me all i know in absolute definite, regardless of if this is a REALLY BAD update or not, there is a TON of outrage from (possible) misunderstandings, and if it's not addressed it might just be enough to can DA for good... (for clarification, i'm not saying "nah this update isn't so bad lol" NOR am i saying "y'all gtfo of DA rn", just tryna give extra info that i'm not sure is well known. also, i did the whole opt-out form + check box if it is as bad as everyone thinks it is)

[@MugiHours]

Yeah, this was my interpretation of the situation as well. The opt-out was for other AIs scraping DA and DreamUp wasn't meant to use art on DA (so Princess Celestia is misinformed about this). There was also a Google doc going around for opting out of DreamUp but it was misinterpreted by a lot of people. The DreamUp opt-out doc was for preventing artist's work on other platforms from being scraped by DreamUp as they ask for links to other social media that link back to their DA account as proof of identity. For example, it could protect a DA user's art that was posted on Tumblr or Twitter (in theory). The problem is that once an AI scrapes something, it can't unscrape it so the only benefit is protection against future AI generators that have yet to scrape anything. I think DA has good intentions about this, even though I despise AI, because they're trying to find a compromise and figure out what to do with the future of art when AI is the inevitable future. They were hoping to take a first step in having an "opt-out" feature to AI generation at all in an attempt to make the inevitable be more ethical. They want to encourage other AI generators to include #noai into their code in an attempt to promote that more ethical future. DA just executed and worded things VERY poorly on a site where most people already deeply hated AI. There's no reason to believe other AI companies would even bother with #noai, either. And now that DreamUp got such huge backlash, it'll probably completely dissuade other AI companies from ever implementing opt-out options. It was all well-meaning stupidity, more likely than not.

[@quetevalgavergaaa]

The problem is that DreamUp uses Stable Diffusion, which uses the LAION 5B dataset that scraped DeviantArt more than a million times already. If you look into the dataset, you will find most DevianArt famous artists are all there, and there is no way to untrain it, ever.

[@UndeadVogel_]

@@quetevalgavergaaa ouch 💀