his comics are great. i enjoyed the full page of short format comics: www.peppercarrot.com/en/…/peppercarrot.html

first impressions give a strong ai vibe, but he makes a good case that ai looks like his work instead indeed

He’s been doing this same art style for many years, certainly before LLMs were launched.

His Pepper & Carrot series started in 2014, all freely released under a Creative Commons license, by the way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%26Carrot

I like his art, and have been reading his comics before AI flood, but one thing I find very annoying now that I didn’t notice before: AI slop tends to draw characters staring intently at nothing, completely missing an object they are supposed to look at, so now it irks me whenever I see that even if it’s a human made art. Edit: and to be fair, here the character looks at a parrot instead of painting, which is valid but feels off at a first glance, maybe I just need to go touch some dry grass left. end edit

Same thing to a lesser extent for when a character does an action like chopping a PC monitor with an axe, but it looks like a slap instead, which I also have seen made by humans. I get it, action poses are hard, it’s just now I’m more sensitive to those because of all the slop 😩

The same happens to people who write a lot and pay attention to their style, such as this gentleman. The way LLMs generate text is strongly influenced by what used to be considered a high-effort eloquent style. Varied sentence lengths, triplets, typographically correct punctuation, yada yada yada. Until recently, that stuff used to be the hallmark of professional writers (and Kenyans, apparently).

What were LLMs trained on? Professional writing, first and foremost. Books, scientific papers, op-eds, blog posts. So by default they take a polite, professional tone with all the flourishes and best practices that previously used to be de rigueur for authors and the like. So now what happens when someone used to “proper” writing writes something?

Everyone thinks it’s AI slop because that’s how LLMs talk. High effort now looks like low effort. And because tech bros immediately went on to develop “humanizing” tech, any other style will soon also look like low effort. And the same is true for art: Being able to produce highly detailed pictures with spectacular colors and shadows went from something impressive to evidence that you’re just a random jackass with a ChatGPT subscription.

You can’t really win anymore. Anything short of a live performance or a feature-length movie could feasibly have been generated by a fully automated content mill. That really sucks if you want to engage in creative expression of any kind and doubly so if you once thought you could make a living off of that.

Just gotta use the latest slang to come out of tik tok before it hits the model training ong fr fr bruh. Ah shit I’m behind brb

Problem is, if your slang is too new it looks like gibberish. Of course you could try something else that stands out. Like badly translated idioms.

But it’s probably jacket like pants. Even if you tear your ass open to make your writing look less 08/15 that doesn’t mean everything’s in butter. It’s probably only a matter of time until LLMs will copper off that style as well and your clever plan turns into a zero number. And that’s where the hare lies in the pepper: Your clarity goes over the Jordan and it ain’t itching the LLMs’ bean. It’ll get trained on your stuff anyway and the cat bites its own tail.

Maybe bad translations aren’t the solution either.

Maybe bad translations aren’t the solution either.

No, by all means, please continue. I’m fully invested now.

Since AI has poisoned the space for professional writing, and for slang, gibberish is the only thing we have left.

It seems like it has way too stable continuity between different panels to be AI generated.

“Everybody wants to be a sleuth” or something, analog to “everyone’s a critic”.

I wish it was limited to visual artists; just a few minutes ago I read a lengthy & well-written comment right here in the fediverse, to which someone replied “they shouldn’t have used AI to write it”. Somehow completely ignoring the actual content.

This has been going on for a while. Partially because AI-generated imagery was really bad just a couple of years ago, so people feel competent, otoh it gets harder to detect, which is a challenge… not sure where I’m going with this, but I have a feeling that this is an aspect of human behavior that manifests in other regards, too, and has forever. And that I believe it will pass, although the downside might be that artists will start to create things that deliberately do not look “like they’re AI”.

I always found AI art easy to spot. washed out/dull colours with usually heavy lines. That’s all I look at. So looking at this artists work it’s clear it isn’t AI to me at least.

Yes, and when the models change, you won’t be able to detect shit. Meaning you’ll be accusing actual artists if you aren’t careful. This shit is changing, and fast. Don’t be complacent

I get it though, the state of everything right now really really sucks. When I enjoy content that I later find to be AI generated, I feel like I’ve been deceived or manipulated and it has me doubting the authenticity of pretty much everything to avoid feeling that way.

I don’t know what the solution would be to it at this point either

The solution is to not worry about whether it’s AI generated. It’s a tool; it can be used well by skilled people to create a good output, and it can be used poorly by unskilled people to create a poor output.

It’s a tool; it can be used well by skilled people to create a good output

Of course that’s true for things like programming if used only as a chat-based responsive rubber duck to help debug or investigate potential architecture. People using it to spit out entire projects is terrible though and it’s destroying the open source ecosystem by making it difficult to find projects that aren’t jank and likely to be immediately abandoned

But in regards to generating any sort of art media, there is no good output or skilled creators because there’s no skill or effort put into it. You’re not skilled because you put a prompt into a chat bot in the same way you’re not a skilled chef for putting in an order at McDonalds.

People using it to spit out entire projects is terrible though and it’s destroying the open source ecosystem by making it difficult to find projects that aren’t jank and likely to be immediately abandoned

This is a temporary issue; if a project you are interested in gets abandoned, fork it and maintain it (with AI). The problem is that too many people are rejecting the tool that can mitigate the issue. If history is any indication, this is just growing pains, and won’t last long.

But in regards to generating any sort of art media, there is no good output or skilled creators because there’s no skill or effort put into it

I really don’t mean this to sound harsh, but what you’re saying here is gatekeeping and inaccurate.

I can give you an entire movie studio with everything you need to create a movie, including writers, actors, special effects, etc-- leaving only the directing to you, and you can still output garbage. Just having all the tools at your disposal doesn’t make something good quality. However, if we put a skilled director in that same exact situation, and the output will be significantly better. AI can handle much of the process, but that doesn’t mean there’s no skill or effort involved.

Additionally, writing prompts does involve creativity. Coming up with an idea is a creative process. To lean on your metaphor, coming up with an interesting and delicious dish is the creative aspect of the process, not just cooking it.

“…what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Quoting an Adam Sandler movie at me instead of addressing anything I said says more about you than what I said. lol

You’re missing the point of why AI output is so obnoxious.

It’s like an updated version of the bullshit asymmetry principle: it takes considerably more time and energy to parse AI-produced works (art, text, music etc) than it does for traditional low-quality low-effort shit, because it’s produced in large quantities and has a superficial look of being professionally produced.

AI hasn’t made shit artists better, but it has enabled them to suck all the oxygen out of the room and make the process of seeking and enjoying good art intractable and infuriating. It also hasn’t made good artists better either, because good artists are already better than AI.

I agree that this is a concern, but it’s a problem already solved. Do you read every single post on Lemmy? How do you deal with all the garbage, low effort posts?

And while you’re focusing on the negative aspects of AI, you might consider the flip side of it. How many good, creative ideas died on the vine because the person who came up with the idea lacked the technical skill to implement it?

I understand that it might not seem this way for those people who attempt to make money on their technical skill, but lowering the bar between idea to implementation is an overall benefit to culture.

I disagree. Anyone working in a skilled profession can attest to the number of people who come to them saying that they have this “great idea” for you to work on, for free. It’s never a great idea. Skilled professional have their own great ideas, and that’s often the motivator for acquiring new skills to make those ideas possible.

Lowering the bar between idea and implementation, in a capitalist, surveillance/attention-based, target-marketed world further incentivizes low-effort, high-engagement practices and likely shrinks the space for high-effort markets.

Meanwhile the tools “lowering the bar” are rent-only or need hardware that is quickly becoming unaffordable. Silicon Valley’s only play is enshittification. If it actually is successful it’s only a matter of time before they switch from growth mode to profit mode and it’s google search all over again but this time you’re paying a monthly fee. If you want to have an idea of how that works out ask an adobe user-- and those were products that were already profitable. There is no way people are willing to pay the actual cost of ai, it will need to be extracted. The rest is externalities.

It’s never a great idea.

There is no possible way you can even begin to support this statement.

It’s not exactly unheard of to read about an indie developer who says something like “I learned to code so I could implement my idea”. It is a real thing. How many people had an idea but couldn’t spend the time learning the skills needed to implement it? It seems wildly inprobable that the number is zero.

Lowering the bar between idea and implementation, in a capitalist, surveillance/attention-based, target-marketed world further incentivizes low-effort, high-engagement practices and likely shrinks the space for high-effort markets.

You’re pointing out potential issues with the economic model, not with AI.

Meanwhile the tools “lowering the bar” are rent-only or need hardware that is quickly becoming unaffordable. Silicon Valley’s only play is enshittification. If it actually is successful it’s only a matter of time before they switch from growth mode to profit mode and it’s google search all over again but this time you’re paying a monthly fee.

This “there is an initial investment cost” issue has always existed. I couldn’t learn to play guitar without a guitar. Except for a vague “AI = bad” sentiment, I’m not even sure why you’re discussing this. I never said lowering the bar meant there would be no bar.

I don’t feel that way.

Almost ten years ago I read something an AI had written “by itself”. Apart from the initial paragraph, which was the human-supplied prompt, it read like something a student might have written to get the required number of words for their essay.

I don’t see AI making good content, ever. If that changes, I’ll re-evaluate my position.

In other words, shitty content is shitty no matter who created it.

One also needs to consider that all AI content has still ultimately been created by humans at some point, and that’s where things get murky.

artists will start to create things that deliberately do not look “like they’re AI”.

Arguably though this is how new art styles are often created. What is the current safe, trendy art gets challenged. Andy Worhol painted a grid of Campbell’s tomato soup cans which is considered an important piece of American Modern Art. I’m certainly not saying “an upside to AI is that it will force artists to be more creative” or anything like that, moreso that as you said, a pattern of artists rebelling against the norm is a historical cycle rather than something new AI will bring on.

It will always be an arms race. If someone develops a new style that doesn’t look like AI, then it’s only a matter of time before an AI model can generate that style.

And the future I see for this arms race is eventually it will be better than humans at producing art that doesn’t look like AI.

I’m at the point where I think AI generated shit should be judged on its own merit rather than for whether or not it’s AI because eventually we won’t be able to tell from other factors and any attempts will end up hurting humans more than the AIs (because they have no feelings to be hurt and will just continue while some portion of the humans will get discouraged and stop bothering to try).

Plus, at least with programming, saying code sucks because it’s AI generated is weak. If a code submission is shit, there will be technical reasons that it is shit that have nothing to do with who (or what) wrote it.

Feel similar to NothingEverHappens, now we get EverythinIsAI. That fucking garbage just further erodes trust.

I had someone ask me recently if a picture of Thomas Aquinas was AI-generated. It was a 15th-century painting.

Which is the goal. Low trust societies are easier (initially) to control

What an amazing artist. Wow! So many great works. 🤯

If it’s any consolation, we are nearing the point where it’s legit impossible to tell and people will slowly go back to caring about the content instead.

What does this mean? Is art not content?

It means that once the comic output from AI is indistinguishable from the output of an artist, then people will stop concentrating on the tools used and go back to judging a comic on if it was funny or entertaining.

This guy draws really well but none of his comics are good. It’s all trite boring pandering.

To be clear, I’m not saying hand made art has no value, just that a shit joke isn’t somehow better than a good one just because of the tools used.

Good content + real art > Good content + AI > boring content + real art

Damn, that’s a super crass way of approaching the world.

It’s crazy to imagine someone judging something on the value and enjoyment it brings them.

It’s crazy to imagine the only value in an art work is how well it conveys a joke

Not the only value, just that it’s the main one. Because we read comics to be entertained, not to marvel at someone’s drawing talent. If comics were only about art quality, then we wouldn’t have stick figure and paint drawings getting upvotes either.

Like I said, having something hand drawn well is always a huge positive, but it doesn’t make up for trite low denominator content.

Good content + art > good content + AI > bad content + art

Going Art > AI no matter what just means you have little perspective and live your life through knee jerk reactions.

If you go just by content, his comics suck, deal with it.

we read comics to be entertained

Speak for yourself. Sometimes I do, but art style is often a critical value for me. I like Revoy’s art, and have done for over 15 years. I agree that his writing is not always amazing, but I still enjoy his work as a whole.

If you go just by content

a) This is a weird definition of “content” - I think most people would include visual art, and b) that’s a big universalising “if” … I don’t think most people only value a comic for it’s words.

My point is that once you can’t tell, then you’ll go back to judging a comic how you used to (a mix of art content + message content)

Right now, you first look if it’s AI or not and toss it in the bin if it is. That’s fine but are you going to start chasing down Krita files for everything you see in a month?

We are seriously close to not being to tell if a comic is AI generated, and I’m talking about raw output from a two sentence prompt.

Agreed. That’s why I keep referencing the toupee fallacy: it’s easy to detect AI slop because it’s slop but anything well-made flies under the radar. This leads many people to assume that everything made using AI is by default not good and conversely when something is good they falsely assume a human made it. I’d argue that virtually every devout AI hater has at some point enjoyed AI content because they failed to detect it as such.

So no, not all toupees look bad - you only notice the bad ones.

A lot of people are dumb as hell, and it really shines through every time humanity comes up with something new, good or bad.

Nothing like knowing all your art was 💯 trained on without your consent.

Must be frustrating. I’ve been following him since he was making tutorials using alchemy and mypaint around 2010, so I’ve seen his style coalesce. I can understand the commenters’ suspicion, it just kinda sucks that some of the most common AI styles landed so close to his…

Is the yellow tint in the strip him deliberately trying to make some sort of point, or is it always like that?

I hadn’t noticed it, but the whole style is petty similar to a lot of his recent work, so I guess it’s not a deliberate point.

I saw comments on his Fediverse post of the comic indicating it may be that “golden sunlight” shading idea of adding warmth. It’s much flatter of an effect in generated images than in his art, I think, where sometimes it’s heavy and sometimes light and not even always present.

I fucking hate social networks for this exactly, the 80% of the users are just lazy motherfuckers who do not do anything for their lifes but comment shit, their life force is literally criticize others while being such useless pieces of shit

Can someone explain what an open source comic artist is?

I think it’s in reference to

His comic is open source. Might seem like a moot point seeing as how most comics can be seen on the web for free but it lets people use it for other stuff. From what I understand, a few of his comics have been turned into short animations and things like that. Kind of cool tbh.

Not only are his comics CC, his entire artistic workflow is built on FOSS. His art tablet runs Linux, he uses Krita for digital painting, his fonts and brushes are FOSS too, and he provides them free of charge for anybody to download.

He also provides free tutorials and guides on his setup and workflow, and advice one how to start using FOSS as a professional artist.

based fossmaxxing

Relevant David Revoy cartoon: https://thebrainbin.org/m/comicstrips@lemmy.world/t/1848750/authenticity-problem

Pro tip: when copying a link to a Lemmy/Piefed/Kbin/etc post, please make sure you use your instance’s option to copy the link to the post on its original instance (the instance the post was made on), rather than simply copying the link to the post on your instance out of your URL bar. On your instance’s web interface, that option is in the More drop down next to the Boost button, just below the post title. (On a Lemmy instance, the link to the original post is the Fediverse icon right next to the upvote and downvote buttons, and you can right click and Copy Link from there).

Obviously, when you open a post in the browser on an instance that isn’t yours by clicking a link (for example, this link to this same post on my instance, which is a vanilla Lemmy instance), you can’t interact with it, because you aren’t logged in, because you don’t have an account on that instance. To interact with it, you need to open the same post through your own instance.

If you have a link to a post on the instance it was created on, you can simply paste that URL (the whole thing) into your instance’s search bar to open it on there, so you can vote/comment/etc. Some mobile apps can even do this automatically. However, this doesn’t work if you paste a link to a post through an instance other than the instance it was created on. In order to interact with the post you just linked to, people have to click the link to open the post on your instance, then click the button on there to copy the original link, before pasting it into their own instance. It’s polite not to make them go through that extra work.

Judging by your account age, it seems you’re new to Lemmy, so you probably didn’t know that. Just something to keep in mind for future. :)

Seems like it would be more effective to get the client applications to (suggest to) clean up the links. All users can’t remember that.

The first time I saw one of his comics I really thought it was AI as well. The yellow tint was part of it, but I think another part is the background and foreground not matching. Another thing that stood out was just the amount of detail, felt way more effort than most web comics.

It really is too bad for the artists, he clearly puts a ton of work into these, and it no doubt hurts to have others undercut that.

I’m afraid to say I did too and it wasn’t until I saw his time-lapse that I was fully convinced. I think it’s the soft, studio ghibli like style. One of the chat GPT models was spruiking it a year or so ago and everybody was posting ‘Ghiblified’ profile pics so now it’s kind of synonymous with low effort AI art (which is such a shame).

I blame the image generators more than the people. If they didn’t exist, nobody would be blaming the artist for anything.

There are probably artists thinking “I don’t wanna post my art online cause what if they call it fake or use it to train” too nowadays.

Alternatively, we could change social traditions to one where it’s normal to go “Well artist’s credit is there, I will investigate real quick.” But that’s for later.

TFW your illustrations are too aesthetically pleasing 🫠

David has been drawing the Pepper and Carrot webcomic for well over a decade now and his style has been pretty consistent.

He makes them all in Krita as well.