The controversy around AI art has reached a fever pitch. Many traditional artists have reacted vehemently to the proliferation of AI art in their communities, rejecting anything associated with AI with rancor.
Companies that make Art platforms and tools have had to make difficult decisions regarding where they stand on the topic.
Most of them recognize how transformative this technology will be, especially in the hands of artists. At the same time, they do not want to stir up hate on social media, and risk alienating a large percentage of their customers.
Communities are forced to take a position
Let’s take a look at some well known companies and how they’ve been forced to respond to the AI debate:
- Celsys, the Japanese company that makes the popular illustration software CLIP Studio Paint, announced they would release a Stable Diffusion feature inside of CLIP Studio…resulting in massive Twitter backlash. The company withdrew the feature just 2 days after the announcement.
- Niche communities such as Newgrounds (games and art), Inkblot Art (general art) and Fur Affinity (furry art) have decided to ban AI outright.
- Reddit is divided in thousands of communities called subreddits. The decision to allow or disallow AI has fallen to the hands of subreddit moderators, who are unpaid volunteers dedicated to maintaining community quality.
- Subreddits such as r/pics, r/dune and r/leagueoflegends have banned AI
- Subreddits such as r/gameofthrones and r/harrypotter allow AI
- Subreddits like r/midjourney, r/stablediffusion and r/aiart are of course, dedicated to AI
- DeviantArt is the single largest art community in the world, and one of the top 300 websites in the world in terms of visitors. It’s safe to say that many communities will follow the example they set.
- DeviantArt looks to sympathetic to AI. CEO Moti Levys has said: “AI technology for creation is a powerful force we can’t ignore. . . . It would be impossible for DeviantArt to try to block or censor this art technology.”
- They have released a feature for users to disallow AI to be trained on their artwork.
- ArtStation is the largest art community for actual professionals.
- In December 2022, users protested the presence of AI art on the platform by flooding the site with an anti-AI image.
- Epic Games, the parent company of ArtStation released the statement: “ArtStation’s content guidelines do not prohibit the use of AI in the process of artwork being posted.”
- GamesRadar reports the response has only set off more protests.
We’re not sure how communities like DeviantArt and ArtStation will respond to AI in the future. For the time being, it seems like they have decided not to take any action.
This means that AI artists and traditional artists must co-exist uneasily.
Many AI artists have wondered: what platforms are supportive of AI?
AI Friendly Alternatives to ArtStation
Crypto Art Communities
Crypto Art communities have welcomed AI art since it first started to trend.
Foundation
Foundation is a specialist platform designed to bring digital creators, crypto natives, and collectors together to move culture forward
SuperRare
SuperRare has a strong focus on being a marketplace for people to buy and sell unique, single-edition digital artworks.
Rarible
Rarible is an NFT market.
I would say it’s less artistic overall than Foundation of SuperRare
Most of these platforms are for NFT selling, and not aimed at the AI artists who just wants to display their work
AI Aggregation Websites
While these sites are not ‘portfolio’ sites, they scrape or aggregate AI images created with other tools. Some attribute to original owners.
Midjourney’s App
Midjourney has a public gallery where its users can show (or hide) their generations.
Lexica.art
The largest AI art aggregator, that calls itself a ‘search engine for AI images’.
