Vietnam-based digital artist Ben Moran was abruptly banned by moderators on Reddit, accusing them of generating the work using AI, which is banned on the forum.
They offered to send the raw Adobe Photoshop file that would ensure transparency but the moderator did not budge.
“I don’t believe you,” the moderator responded. “Even if you did ‘paint’ it yourself, it’s so obviously an AI-prompted design that it doesn’t matter.”
“If you really are a ‘serious’ artist,” they continued, “then you need to find a different style because A) no one is going to believe when you say it’s not AI, and B) the AI can do better in seconds what might take you hours.”
Moran runs their own art studio, is itself against the development of AI art — which makes the moderator’s decision all the more ironic.
“There’s no passion if you can create an artwork that way,” they told Vice. “And the biggest problem is that I worry about the development of AI art, all of the artists will lose their passion to create a painting.”
“In my opinion, the development of AI is good for the industry, not for the art community and artists,” they later added.
“We don’t necessarily have anything against AI Art, but when people can churn it out so quickly and easily if it’s allowed the sub becomes nothing but AI art rather quickly,” one moderator explained to Vice.
Unfortunately, these issues will keep appearing more with time as more AI platforms are becoming accessible to everyone. Originality will truly become rare and hard to identify.