Opinion: I personally have no problems with AI art. The methods AI uses to draw are almost verbatim the same techniques humans have used for centuries to learn the techniques or even copy the techniques of the masters that came before them. The difference is that the AI can learn at a much quicker pace due to the models it has to work from.

I have no problems with this. Is AI perfect? Absolutely not. It still requires, besides a prompt, human intervention (AKA inpainting) to fix the flaws of the piece the AI has created to give it the perfection cannot due the first time. A flaw most artists also suffer from (some fix, some don’t.)

The good thing about AI art is that it isn’t copyrightable. As proven with the AI comic Zarya of the Dawn.

AI’s are not humans. Meaning the works they create are in the public domain. And companies that want to use it, will not care enough to even pay someone to perform the inpainting needed to fix the extra limbs flaw that AI produces now. So such games like bloodlines, which uses AI and does not do inpainting, can easily be spotted and avoided because you can easily spot the flaws of AI art in it.

Now I do feel their is the problem that people could try and pass AI art as an artists actual work. Which is a legitimate concern. But AI companies like Stability AI or individuals building their own AI software could easily resolve this, by including in the software a watermark that is placed in the bottom right or top right corner and shows either the company logo and generated “DD/MM/YYYY” or clearly states “AI generated art, Generated on DD/MM/YYYY”

This way it can easily help separate the fakes from originals. Only way for anyone to fake an AI work as an original after this is to manually go in and edit out the watermark. Which a more talented individual can do, but why bother if they got the talent to remove it?

On the point of AI writing, I don’t think anyone has much to actually fear. AI writing is still pretty bad even by modern and ancient author standards. The wiriting can sound convincingly human, but their is still nuance in what is written by humans that AI still cannot capture and easy to spot. Emotions are a good example of this. What AI writes sounds wooden and stilted and when it tries to include something like a joke, it falls flat. This is because it doesn’t understand what makes a joke funny. It can copy something someone else has written that is funny but when it attempts to create something in that style and keep the humor, it doesn’t work because again, AI does not understand this.

AI music is another thing, after having listened to AI neco arc, Freddie Mercury, Frank Sinatra, and Johnny Cash, the only two AI even got anywhere close to good was Cash and Sinatra.

But then the people who generated those carefully selected titles that would work well with the voice models they had on hand. And probably did extra work to perfect and make Cash and Sinatra’s performance better.

Where as Mercury and Neco Arc suffer from AI with a very limited models and their is garbling within the audio leaving some lyrics unintelligible. And Freddie in particular has moments where it sounds like him then moments where it sounds like someone playing around in audacity to make the original singer mimic Mercury.

Should AI Art be allowed in furry spaces?: Yes it should. However I do believe it must be limited down to a single Community or thread if this were an image board, fully dedicated to AI imagery. None of the AI art should leak out into the other community or threads.

This way it doesn’t overflow to all the other communities or threads dedicated to work created by actual artists.

Use cases: the actual AI creating generated art? Not so much. The inpainting tool however? I feel that is a game changer for lazy artists. It can be used to fix certain flaws that exist in their own works. Like say they drew a left foot, but meant to draw a right foot, the inpainting tool and with a model built around their own art style, can be used to allow AI to redraw the foot correctly. Fixing the artists actual mistake in the piece.

Long-term impact?: Their won’t be much of a long term impact. AI is nice right now, but among furries, we are going to use and abuse it to the point we will burn ourselves out on it. It will drive many back to having greater appreciation for actual art made by real artists and not a machine. Simply because the machine has oversaturated the fandom with it’s knock off art.

People have created knock off artwork for years that mimic a masters style. But people don’t want art that mimics a masters style. They want an original piece from a well known artist or atleast a print of a well known artists work.

I have a simple shoe analogy that sums this up quite well “People want Nike Jordans, not Mike Jongdonz”

Granted, I don’t know how popular Jordan’s are in Europe or the UK, I know in the US they are quite expensive quality basketball shoes, and if never worn, retain their value. And prices for them simply go up because they are collectable.

Whereas if you have a knock off like Mike Jongdonz, they are not as well made, they contain no value and are simply their to rip off the real brand. Not to mention you’ll be thoroughly embarrassed when people point out what you got are not real Jordans.

The same will be true of furry artists and AI art. Furry artists are the real deal and AI is the cheap knock off.

The knock off can be neat and interesting, but it will never compare to the real deal.