I personally hate it. It’s such a buzz kill to see a semi clean, airbrushed ai model instead of a sexy pic of a guy. I really hate this trend of using ai for pics. It’s made Tumblr pages that I used to visit a lot, not very enticing anymore. Ai images just suck.
I think it removes a lot of questions of consent, i know quite a few captions on twitter and stuff have been removed because the person in the photo complained. So in the way, AI has a place in it.
I’m very interested in hearing other people’s opinions.
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I think it works best to depict scenes or characters that couldn’t exist as a real photo.
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But none of those exist apart from furry stuff. All the ai stuff I see is just generic poses with uncanny valley men’s faces and bodies.
In general, I dislike when people illustrate their stories with random pictures they find on the internet. AI art has a similar vibe to me.
I tried using AI generated art for one of my Patreon stories a while ago. I agree — the uncanny valley is strong with a lot of the images you see, so I had the AI use an oil painting style so it’s feel more like an illustration.
I thought that was a decent balance.
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I work in the 3d industry for a living and so I know the devastation AI art does for our craft and how clients and potential employers are blatant with their intent of using AI technology to eventually replace real artists. So I, for one, would want to put a stop to the momentum that AI art has before it can do serious damage to people’s livelihoods in the future
To me it depends. I’ve already written in another thread that I feel that the medium of writing is not enhanced with illustrations unless those illustrations provide information that is not in the writing. (Sort of how music can supply an opera or a song with information that is not in the text.)
I was not impressed with AI until I read @rubbrsome 's story The Male Order which was inspired by an artist he found on Instagram, Bvstard.ai. I checked out the artist’s work, was hooked by how his lovably weird imagination hits so many of my buttons and now regularly follow him and even converse with him occasionally. To underscore @Beaner 's comment, Bvstard.ai produces images that could not possibly exist as photographs. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons rubbrsome’s story works so well (in addition to him being a virtuosic author).
I also want to mention a graphic story based on one of my favorite stories, Pollination by @absman420. Even Absman420 complimented how the graphic version embellished his original story.
As with the music comment above, I could easily imagine an illustrated story where the text does not mention something (e.g. gradual transformation) that is obvious from the illustrations. So yes, it depends on the skill of the author and illustrator.
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There have been two comic book versions. One hand-drawn, the other CGI – I love them both.
As someone who’s written a LOT of theatre, adapting from one genre to another always brings change. A book is not a movie – they both tell stories in different ways, even the same story!
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On the aspect of AI art vs human creators, that’s a different conversation, especially if making money with it. When the story is offered for free, we almost never own the rights to the pictures included, be them non-AI or AI, so its all stolen anyway.
On the aspect of if they add to the story, I’ve learned that everyone has different ways of being turned on or not, and it’s not possible to please everyone. Personally, I don’t mind the uncanny valley, I’m a comic book reader who responds even to cartoon nudes, so it doesn’t bother me. My stories are inspired by pictures even though I try for them not to need them to paint the scenes. So some people love when I have pictures, some people hate it, some people like them inline, some don’t, some prefer links, etc… I published one major story with only AI art, Human Trials, and while most people seemed to enjoy the pictures, I had one particularly nasty comment that ridiculed them. So now I put my almost trademarked montages at the end of my stories, so they can be ignored by those who don’t want them.
I’m also someone who can be turned off by the wrong picture, so I understand. Even describing someone with a mustache or a body builder type in words turn me off, so sometimes I will download the story and change the descriptions to be able to enjoy it.
In any case, I don’t think there’s a strong argument for or against, it’s really totally a matter of taste. So as a writer, I look for solutions that can cater to as many tastes as possible.
[I see the topic was about tf stories and I answered for all stories, but it may still be relevant.]
I oppose it in two ways because not only the art usually sucks but also it steals jobs from the artists that could use it. The story does not need to have images, they are just additives so i prefer when it does not have ai in it
I love, love, love it. There are deep ethical issues to explore, the primary one surrounding deepfakes, and I think over time it will only get more impressive. Absolutely delighted by AI art generation,and am 100% fine with it being used for tf stories. Really annoyed by the puritanical aspect of sex on the internet right now, though, including generative AI.
I do not have an issue with AI art in itself. I do not like if it is one of the truly poor varieties that literally blended parts of photo images, I have seen some that still showed the site name that they took it from. I see AI art as a tool for the user to bring what they imagine to life but it is not a replacement for an artist that has a certain style or imagination. AI today is closer to a natural language refinement that lets the program interpret better what the user describes.
I have seen some people using AI art generators that put in a lot of work to developing the prompts to make an image of what they want, with a lot of failures. Especially nude photos. The most difficult part seems to be the penis, I have seen some truly horrific images from some of those. The flaws seem to be smaller detailed parts like fingers and feet…and of course the penis. Part of this is a wide variety of forms the penis can take. Also, a lot of the companies that train these art AI’s woefully neglect source material for male genitals so the program tries to fill in a gap of its “knowledge” with guesses. Hair is another infamous issue with computer graphics, the computers often simply cannot create a hair pattern that is believable to the human eye. The hair is often too regular.
Depending on your body types or features attraction a lot of AI generated art probably will not be attractive due to limitations. I have seen the best AI generated art being started by the AI then the artist takes it and fixes where it went wrong. Artists will always have a better edge on making art. Humans have a better understanding of who their viewers are to guide the construction. AI’s currently can only take the prompt you gave it and fill in random things that fit criteria.
I don’t feel AI images add meaningfully to stories. It’s really just an annoyance, in my view (clicking on the images, and then having to navigate back to the story). It interrupts the flow, and the images of the characters are always more interesting/vibrant in one’s own mind’s eye.
That being said, I can always just not click on the images. Writes should add/not add images based on whatever motivates / pleases them.
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I’m surprised we’re not ready to be honest.
It’s happened in other fields.
I do have an interesting thought experiment.
Guy has several hundred bucks commission open for three years (let’s say 250 bucks, please draw me this image), he can’t find an artist who’s style he wants to commission who is taking commissions; his top 5 choices are all closed and have been closed for the past three years.
He eventually explores AI and generates images he’s happy with.
Is his behaviour immoral?
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my opinion on this is interesting, at least i think it is, i for one dont have a strong position on AI art, ive messed with one of the generators mentioned here on another post and had varied results. AI art for me just isnt at a point that id use it to try to convey just how my characters look. that said, if it was better i might use it at least for character portraits. while i agree i wouldnt want to take money from artists by using AI art, i also am not in a financial position to pay someone for commissions. as my stories are here on this site for free id consider AI art if it were better, id also consider paying an artist for art for my stories if i were able.
i also am someone who has a pretty good imagination and can see the characters im writing in my minds eye, so for me none of the AI generators ive tried have even been close to what i want my character to look like for me to want to use them.
The genie is out of the bottle already. There is no turning back now.
I think the development is devastating for artists. Any kind of artists. Not only for painters, but also for musicians, movie makers, and of course writers.
Do I think that AI content will reach the same level of ingenuity as human-created content? Maybe not quite, maybe it’ll just take a couple of decades more. But that doesn’t matter. It’s enough that a real human being can give his ideas and input to an AI which then executes the fantasy until the human is happy.
That alone will devalue the handiwork of the majority of “normal” creative humans. Which is awful. It won’t affect just artists, though, many other professions, like programming for example, will also be affected.
To the topic here:
You cannot force the genie back into the bottle, no matter how much you hate the effects. The only way is to embrace it. It’s always been like this. If you don’t do it yourself, someone else will. Rules you put on yourself are ignored somewhere else on the globe.
As for our hobbies: If you find some artist and ask for their creativity to supplement your work, maybe even pay for their effort, kudos to you. If you don’t and just employ AI - well, I think it’s not our place to judge.
In a couple of years, or maybe just months, we will have full animated kinky porn scenes created by AI. Just look at all the kinky drawings that exist already (manually created by kinky artists). The only thing that keeps them from creating full-blown animated scenes is that it’s still not feasible to do that.
And AI will change that. So it’s not just AI-generated art for tf stories. It will be AI-generated porn movies with tf and any other kind of kinky content. Whether we like it or not.
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I’m genuinely stoked for this. There are things that I want to do that just require more manpower than I have available, but with the right tools, I might be able to produce some really cool creative pieces. And yeah, there will be plenty of people who argue ‘did I really produce it’ and ‘is it actually creative’?
But when I went to art school, they taught us to use Photoshop. This is just a different layer of abstraction.
The ethics and legality of how these models are trained is definitely contentious. But the genie is out of the bottle, and I want to make cool stuff with that genie.
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That’s the real stinger for me personally though. Like, I AM in a position to pay money for commissions but 
no one I have commissions for is taking commissions, and haven’t been for years.
AI. is talking work off of artists? Yeah maybe, but what work is it taking? All the work none of them will do?
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Personally I’m just upset about the environment cost, too many people toy around with AI generators so casually and aren’t aware of how much energy and water it takes to produce the outputs. I’m aware that all computer use has a cost but overuse of AI in particular feels needlessly wasteful.
Well, while I don’t disagree, but when talking about wasting energy, cryptocurrency is the way bigger offender and it doesn’t serve anything besides people’s greed.
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