Original art x A.I retouched art: an honest discussion

[puppiesandboobies]

But see, I like this.

The character looks unique and stands out more.

The Touched Up version just makes her look like a pretty drawn young girl that I see everywhere.

Your original is nothing to be ashamed of truly.

I can see where the Dev gave up with the Goth girl.

They tried having the AI put makeup on her, and it made every face look like a Picasso painting.

Just my two cents, I like your art.

Many thanks for the kind words. What I have to say - and I'm being completely honest here - is that I prefer your original artwork too. I find it more unique and more fapable, even though the AI output is impressive.

I think we tend to like AI art more than our own art because it's able to technically do things that we can't do. But technical complexity doesn't always mean better art, does it?

Of course, it may not be a universal truth, but perhaps the originality of the art tends to be more and more important from now on.

You're right, I can't let the negative comments get to me. But I'm seriously considering going back to the original art style - it won't be too much work since it's already done.

Good luck on your project! I make your words mine.

Aww thanks so much guys. I think aesthetics is so complex, everyone like different things. But we artists are mentally so perfectionist and see only flaws of our products. Especially when you do hard work for something like game and people only mentions about your art, it can be very discouraging. Tbh I think you guys art is so iconic and authentic, like when people see it you directly associate with your game. Btw if I were you I would make memes with original art and use it in normal messaging, especially blonde girl with her "bitch please" face. I think it would be funny humor side and marketting side.

Even if you continue AI one, you can add her makeup manually as well, let's protect our goth girls

 

[Hongfire Survivor]

But we artists are mentally so perfectionist and see only flaws of our products.

Now see, that could be it's own discussion.

Because I see nice original artwork. You see where you could (or should have) improved.

So then it becomes a mental tug of war. Who do you listen to?

The dozens of Patreons who like your work or the voice in your head that says this could be way better?

My personal example would be when I'm working in DAZ Studio. Sometimes I re-render a scene for an hour because I hate the lighting or a finger is out of place.

I have to sit back and tell myself that sometimes, good enough is enough so I can finally move on.

 

[Meaning Less]

But we artists are mentally so perfectionist and see only flaws of our products.

That's another reason as to why AI art is dangerous for content creators, lack of confidence in themselves can make one rely on AI more than needed subtracting all originality from their unedited creations. What a perfectionist might see as "flaws" is sometimes exactly the element that bring uniqueness to that piece.

You could throw something like Imouto Life into an AI for automated coloring, but then you would have removed the main element that makes that game recognizable.

In short, things aren't so simple that they can be boiled down into "which one looks better" and any content creator should think really hard before "enhancing" their creations.

 

[bethrezen0]

Art on the left reminds me in style of old flash games, AI retouched art on the right looks like the typical "western anime" stuff. Both are ok and have their own thing about them, but in my opinion it is important to take into consideration what is the art for, a porn game in this case and in my opinion the AI edited art from the right suits it better. But i choose the third option of "Art after AI retouching, but I'm still against the use of AI" And not because i just against the AI art or something, but because i believe that the best solution would be to just work in a different style, more befitting for a porn game, than relying on the AI to change the style for you.

But in any case no matter what approach do you choose, it's still at least looks more original than yet another generic DAZ Ren'Py VN.

 

[carrotpop3]

Nope, we consumers just like consistent pretty things. Speaking for myself anyway.

There's a whole lot of very popular games on this site where it seems like the English is optional. Same thing with games using stolen real porn. There's popular ones where the characters change outfits depending on the pose. I like this community but me thinks you're giving the average fapper too much credit.

 

[M$hot]

I feel personally that you are shortchanging yourself. Not saying using an AI is easy, but I imagine it's easier to get the 'AI retouched' version out of the original picture than it is to create the original picture. And while yes, the pics on the right look technically more proficient, they are lacking personality. And personality is what it's all about no? It aids the story, the tension building and all of that.

Plus, not sure AI is to the point where you can essentially have it make a character and remember. She may be destined to become Tiffany in your game, but if you tell the AI 'Tiffany bending over' it's probably going on the fritz. Or you need to invest a LOT of time to teach the AI appropriately and then you still get no guarantees there will be consistency. Wouldn't you rather spend the time you'd need to use to puppy train the AI on practicing your own art instead? If you feel it doesn't measure up.

But in the end, it's your vision for your game, so do whatever feels right. My opinion just like any others posted previous shouldn't hold much if any sway. If others get to dictate, where is the room for you to inject your passion? And if there's no passion, how are you going to keep going? Either way, good luck on however you decide to move forward.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

I liked what i saw on the right. The end.

 

[desmosome]

AI are trained through the illegal use of copyrighted content, without the consent of the rights owners, that aren't even warned that it happen.

Explain what the illegal use is. They don't sell copyrighted content. They don't distribute any copyrighted content. They don't store copyrighted material. If something is available online, anyone can take a look at it, study it, and analyze the data. The courts have already ruled on things like data mining on "publicly available" material.

What is google images? It shows you shitton of copyrighted images, but they are basically indexes that lead to the original location of the picture. Now I'm not an expert on the topic, but Google displays the resolution of those pics. It can show you "related pics." Google can reverse image search. Presumably, Google has some data derived from the contents of the web that it uses for its features. Not to mention the concept of a search engine in general. Fair Use and "Non-Expressive Use" is a thing.

If you noticed, most of the current lawsuits don't try to target the training. They go for the "storing of compressed data" and how its used to make collages. That's absurd and not at all how these AI operate, but they still go for that argument. That tells me that they think the training argument is even weaker.

 

[RedPillBlues]

Yeah, don't use AI art. Even if it looks good for now, you are going to have a huge consistency issue down the road. Even if you go through and draw your original then transform it with AI, each time you are going to get an output slightly different from the rest. And after a few updates in its going to be an actual mess. And even if you go back and try to correct it each image, not only is it going to take a lot of time, but its going to be difficult since you didn't actually put in the work. Thats just additive to all the other problems people have pointed out as well. Develop the skill, as an artist to another its worth it, you've clearly already taken the first steps.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Explain what the illegal use is. They don't sell copyrighted content. They don't distribute any copyrighted content. They don't store copyrighted material. If something is available online, anyone can take a look at it, study it, and analyze the data. The courts have already ruled on things like data mining on "publicly available" material.

And the lawmakers wrote laws about it. And in EU those laws state that you are free to mine any data that you want, as long as you have a lawful access to them and that it's for a none profit use. As for data mining made with a direct, or indirect, intent do make profit, it need the approval of the right owner and it can be subject to license fees.

But the thing you seem to not understand is that AI don't train by browsing through the web, they train by browsing through dedicated databases. And those databases are not Google Image, that only stores the structural description of an image, and proxy them when needed. They stores a copy of the image, what is known but can be proved because they hide behind the US jurisdiction and its strong protection of industrial secrets. No one have the right to take an effective looks at their database, because it would violate their rights to not tell how they operate.
What is hypocritical as hell since they fuck everyone in the ass, raw and twice. Firstly by stealing third parties data, and secondly by preventing you to look at their own data because it would be stealing. What lead to a chaotic situation where many sites know that those databases contain data that are not publicly available, but have no way to prove it since they can't access to those data. And like those companies all have a wiping protocol, relying on justice to access those data is useless, everything would disappear before anyone can reach the servers. What once again would be totally legal, they erase everything in order to protect their own Intellectual Property, because looking at the data would tell you how they operate.

If you noticed, most of the current lawsuits don't try to target the training.

And if you'd read correctly, you would have seen that neither have I.

I have nothing against machine learning, it's the methods used to build the databases that will then be used to train the AI that I strongly hate.

 

[desmosome]

And the lawmakers wrote laws about it. And in EU those laws state that you are free to mine any data that you want, as long as you have a lawful access to them and that it's for a none profit use. As for data mining made with a direct, or indirect, intent do make profit, it need the approval of the right owner and it can be subject to license fees.

But the thing you seem to not understand is that AI don't train by browsing through the web, they train by browsing through dedicated databases. And those databases are not Google Image, that only stores the structural description of an image, and proxy them when needed. They stores a copy of the image, what is known but can be proved because they hide behind the US jurisdiction and its strong protection of industrial secrets. No one have the right to take an effective looks at their database, because it would violate their rights to not tell how they operate.
What is hypocritical as hell since they fuck everyone in the ass, raw and twice. Firstly by stealing third parties data, and secondly by preventing you to look at their own data because it would be stealing. What lead to a chaotic situation where many sites know that those databases contain data that are not publicly available, but have no way to prove it since they can't access to those data. And like those companies all have a wiping protocol, relying on justice to access those data is useless, everything would disappear before anyone can reach the servers. What once again would be totally legal, they erase everything in order to protect their own Intellectual Property, because looking at the data would tell you how they operate.




And if you'd read correctly, you would have seen that neither have I.

I have nothing against machine learning, it's the methods used to build the databases that will then be used to train the AI that I strongly hate.

What do you mean steal third party data? Those repositories are handled by

You must be registered to see the links

, which is a non-profit database which doesn't host the images but analyzes the data to form image-caption pairs. The images are indexes to the source page. The database LAION uses is from

You must be registered to see the links

, which is also a non-profit. Stability AI was

You must be registered to see the links

in the methods used for training. Stable Diffusion itself is open source, so you can't classify it as a commercial product of Stability AI.

AFAIK, the databases themselves are pretty much unreproachable because they are merely indexing. So the battle has to be in regards to how Stable Diffusion used those indexes. If something is found online where anyone can access it, it's "publicly available." That doesn't mean copyright doesn't apply, but they would have to win the lawsuit that "training" on an image is a violation of copyright. I don't think they will win that argument, but let's see how it pans out.

That's the law side of things. Morality or ethics of it is up to your own views. I can spend years perfecting Boichi's art style by viewing copyrighted content that is freely available online. Whether it's uploaded by the artist or illegally by some other dude, it's not unlawful to view it. It becomes unlawful if you download it, but that's such a petty thing that virtually everyone does. You probably have copyrighted pictures on your hard drive right now.

I can sell my art that is completely a copy of that style. That's not against the law, but it's certainly unoriginal and a pretty shitty thing to do. Plus, I would never get anywhere in the scene by doing that. But creative art forms are built upon its predecessors. If I learn what Boichi does and incorporate those techniques and continue to study other artists and styles, I will eventually develop my own style.

Is that sequence of events morally wrong? If something a human does is acceptable, an automated version of it should be acceptable as well if you want to maintain a consistent position.

 

[anne O'nymous]

What do you mean steal third party data? Those repositories are handled by

You must be registered to see the links

, which is a non-profit database which doesn't host the images but analyzes the data to form image-caption pairs. The images are indexes to the source page. The database LAION uses is from

You must be registered to see the links

, which is also a non-profit. Stability AI was

You must be registered to see the links

in the methods used for training. Stable Diffusion itself is open source, so you can't classify it as a commercial product of Stability AI.

*sigh*

There isn't just one AI in the world, and it's not because a software is open source that it can't also be commercial and/or used to earn some money.

 

[desmosome]

*sigh*

There isn't just one AI in the world, and it's not because a software is open source that it can't also be commercial and/or used to earn some money.

Do you think the other AIs are trained in a very different way? They are all operating on similar principles.

Of course open source can be commercialized, but they aren't doing that. The commercialization will come from third parties that use the software as allowed by the open license. If the AI itself is deemed lawful, other entities commercializing the AI or its output would be fine as well.

And it all still boils down to whether training on these databases and the abstracted information derived from the data is a copyright infringement. Copyright is a case by case thing. Making money off of something is just one aspect that goes into the consideration of Fair Use. Who knows? Maybe the other AIs like DALL-E lose a Fair Use defense precisely because they were selling their propriety AI. Maybe they all lose. Maybe they are all fine because the database they used were built on publicly available data and the AIs don't use the actual images in their operation. Whatever happens, it will set case law and precedents, and that will set guidelines on how to proceed lawfully.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Do you think the other AIs are trained in a very different way? They are all operating on similar principles.

Do you really intend to switch the topic every time you answer ?

The question is not how they are trained, but what database(s), among the hundred that exist, they are using to be trained. And the problem is not the AI, nor their training, but some among the major databases, that aren't free and don't care about copyright and privacy.

To this must be added the concerns regarding some other databases, like Amazon's ones by example. When you know that, asking for their data, individuals can receive private conversations (that legally shouldn't even have been recorded) from others people than them, you have reasons to wonder how many of the conversations you had in from of your Alexa are among the tons of audio data offered, either publicly or commercially, for AI training.
And, no, the problem is not that AIs are using your rants against your stupid boss to learn, but that they have the possibility to do it, and that globally peoples don't care because "it's just some AIs".
Do you really believe that it's innocently that companies like Amazon, who own among the most important databases for AI training, are slowly but surely invading your privacy ? In a lot of US counties/towns, Amazon is sharing ring footage with the police force, do you really believe that AIs are not training by looking at your daughter being fingered goodbye by her date of the night ? The single fact that those footage exist is a problem, and now that you can subscribe to "in house delivery" they also have a camera inside your home...

As you said, AIs have the right to mine data because it's not different to what humans are doing... And next thing you'll know, humans will have the right to mine private data, because it's not different to what AIs are doing.
Not because the law is reversible, but because databases are not automatically processed. There's humans that hear the audios, watch the videos, read the texts, in order to describe them. It's only after that mandatory step that the data are added to the database, and that, days or years, later an AI will train, watching a video it will know as featuring a teenage girl being fingered late at night, and processing it accordingly.
And since those humans have the right to do so, why other humans wouldn't have it ?


I also note that you didn't cared to address the opposite problem raised by the use of AIs.
The fact that there's a big hole regarding who own the property over AI generated content is far to be insignificant, especially in the adult gaming scene. If it's not your property, then it's either in public domain and anyone can use it or, worse it happen to be the property of the AI and its creators/owner(s). Then, at anytime they can decide that you have to stop your game and remove all existing copy ; like they can decide to ask for royalties.

 

[Deleted member 440241]

There isn't just one AI in the world,

Do you think the other AIs are trained in a very different way?

Do you really intend to switch the topic every time you answer ?

What does it take to be this stupid? Is it intentional? Did you suffer some form of brain damage? Were you born this way? Or are you just paying so little attention to both your own posts and other people's that you have no idea what you're actually saying?

 

[anne O'nymous]

Or are you just paying so little attention to both your own posts and other people's that you have no idea what you're actually saying?

I pay enough attention to know that my "there isn't only one AI" was answering to:

What do you mean steal third party data? Those repositories are handled by

You must be registered to see the links

, which is a non-profit database which doesn't host the images but analyzes the data to form image-caption pairs.

You should go to sleep, you're clearly drunk.

 

[carrotpop3]

Yeah, don't use AI art. Even if it looks good for now, you are going to have a huge consistency issue down the road. Even if you go through and draw your original then transform it with AI, each time you are going to get an output slightly different from the rest. And after a few updates in its going to be an actual mess. And even if you go back and try to correct it each image, not only is it going to take a lot of time, but its going to be difficult since you didn't actually put in the work. Thats just additive to all the other problems people have pointed out as well. Develop the skill, as an artist to another its worth it, you've clearly already taken the first steps.

This I do highly agree with. What you make with AI today will probably look like shit in three months. AI development is happening just too quickly. Hell we just moved into the advent of Controlnets to get perfect poses just like a week or two ago.

 

[Losersriot]

After publishing the first version of my game (Dirty Cases) yesterday, I received some criticism related to the use of A.I. to 'improve' the overall artwork. Some liked the art and defended it. Others said that the old art was better and that the AI makes it uglier or a bit generic (and is this a problem in a market dominated by the same Honey Select/Koikatsu/DAZ 3D models? It is another point of discussion.)

Particularly, we on the team found the AI 'enhanced' versions to be prettier. And that some of these comments might be pure and simple luddism. Or not.

Here, I share the "before/after" of the arts for general appreciation and therefore ask for an honest opinion on the use of AI.

View attachment 2391801

And I take the opportunity to open a general discussion about it here on the forum, since it is a subject in vogue in recent months.

What the hell is AI? You change original western style to pesky, ubiquitous anime!
Why didn't you use AI tools to turn your art into realistic photos?

 

[Losersriot]

Some people talk about 'copyrights' in PORN page!!!!

 

[redknight00]

Those repositories are handled by

You must be registered to see the links

, which is a non-profit database which doesn't host the images but analyzes the data to form image-caption pairs.

F95zone is also a non-profit site and we don't host content on the site, this is just legal bullshittery to get away with piracy.