https://www.facebook.com/story.php/?story_fbid=1767879167356361&id=957662861711333

Name of group is “Claude Monet” but pretty sure that is not the artist

has been flooded with as people try for clicks to make a bit of money.

You've probably seen the replies below, posted yesterday. After Donkees identified it as something from Redbubble, I quickly found similar AI images identified as AI, added to Redbubble's designs by a store in Hong Kong, ohyana. The exact design is on Redbubble, uploaded by itgonbebiblical, and there's no way to find out if it's older than a few years old and thus almost guaranteed NOT to be AI, to be real art. The person who's posting there as itgonbebiblical had fairly simple designs initially and then suddenly switched to intricate, sophisticated designs in a wide variety of styles, which suggests using AI to copy various artists and styles.

There's no.way to know whether there was originally some real artwork, done without AI, that this cat illustration might have copied. That's always a possibility. Redbubble seller ohyana might have mimicked the image itgonbebiblical posted, or might just be using the same AI image generator or one trained on the same stolen artworks and photos.

With AI fakes flooding the internet, it's getting harder to find what's real, where there was genuine artistry as opposed to AI mimicry of art, where there was a new idea instead of AI spitting something out from a short text prompt, with the AI user having little control over it and the AI likely to offer widely varying options, again and again, until something usable and appealing without any obvious AI glitches finally pops up.

It isn't art, and AI is generating images only because hundreds of millions of images, art and photos, were stolen to train the AI.

I hate it.

It devalues art, in the same way writing would be devalued if bookstores and libraries were buried under mountains of AI-generated books, most complete garbage, many copying real writers and books, using similar titles and names, to try to trick readers.

Established book publishers and magazines are taking stands against AI - and sometimes getting very nasty hate mail from AI users; see https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219401436 - but self-publishing platforms are doing little or nothing about it. The last I heard, Amazon was limiting Kindle authors to uploading "only" three new books a day, which already guarantees they'll be AI generated. And since AI can mimic almost anything, one Kindle fake author using AI could upload, in one week, 10 children's books in different styles with or without AI-generated illustrations, 6 novels for adults (any type - science fiction, horror, mystery, romance, literary, etc.), an unauthorized celebrity biography of one of that week's hottest celebrities, a cookbook of any type full of stolen or AI-generated and possibly dangerous recipes, a nonfiction book of some type (including possibly on edible mushrooms with info that's wrong and really dangerous - see https://www.vox.com/24141648/ai-ebook-grift-mushroom-foraging-mycological-society ), a user's manual to almost anything that with AI could get almost anything wrong, and then fill out the 21-book limit with a book of poetry in almost any language mimicking the work of almost any real poet in that language. Using genAI this way requires no real knowledge or talent, just willingness to exploit possible markets as soon as you can identify them. AI automates that sort of fraud and grift, and it's making it necessary to be super-careful when ordering books.

Art and design platforms are also getting buried by AI, and you're much more likely these days to see an artist/designer offering really widely varying styles and designs via AI, sort of throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks, with little or no art training, little time spent on it, no real personal expression involved. Identify a possible market, and have the AI tool try to spit out something that fits.

Unlike really dangerous info in AI-generated books, AI imitations of art can't kill you. But they're destroying art as real culture and human expression, they're hurting real artists' livelihoods, and I have seen some real artists on Twitter sounding so depressed I'm concerned they might give up completely - or worse - out of despair. While the AI users often taunt them and tell them to "adapt or die."

Maybe post it in Editorials & Other Articles.

AI will be the end of everything someday… sigh

editorials and articles from newspapers, magazines, and news websites or blogs.

We all hope not, and I think they're still a long way from developing AI as intelligent as, or more intelligent than, humans (though it's crazy that anyone working in AI is even trying for ASI or AGI when it could be so dangerous and unpredictable.

What we have instead is badly flawed tech that isn't really very useful, but the companies have invested so much in it they're desperate to convince people it's wonderful and should be in everything everywhere all at once.

means they didn't create the images - AI generated them - and I wonder if they not only used a tool trained on stolen artwork, as all image generators are, but specified a real artist's style to copy.

Sigh. I'd been hoping that might have been real art, not fake.

Do you have a direct Redbubble link for the image in the OP?

https://www.redbubble.com/i/poster/Cat-stroke-or-breaststroke-by-itgonbebiblical/159559503.LVTDI

really theirs and not AI (I haven't found a date for the image), it looks like ohyana and other Redbubble sellers are copying it.

Redbubble in 2017, there's no date when any particular image was added. Buf you can view their designs from newest to oldest. I'd been hoping this cat picture would be among the oldest so least likely to be AI, but it isn't. There was a huge change in their designs partway through, with the new ones suddenly much better than the older ones, and using a lot more different styles. Which suggests they did start using AI then, and makes it more likely some other artist's photos or lifelike paintings of pets floating in a pool were in that AI's training data. In which case the similar images being peddled now by other AI-using "artists" could be simply from using the same image generator.

Sigh. I wish AI images weren't flooding everything (they're apparently all over Redbubble) and making it hard to find real art, with AI copies in the way of finding who first created a great image.

from buyers for that cat image on clothing/framed photos/etc, were from 2015.

If it is as old as 2015 or even 2017 (or even 2021 for that matter), it definitely isn't AI.

Where did you find those recommendations?

I was looking on the full range of items available containing that cat image: clothing items, shower curtain, framed photos, etc. Scrolling through the lists of recommendations from previous buyers in order to find the oldest entries. I just sampled a few items and reached the year 2015 several times.

It's possible the oldest recommendations were included in order to build on their previous reputation (?)

not the design on it. The reviews for the cat-stroke design on s t-shirt, for instance

https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Cat-stroke-or-breaststroke-by-itgonbebiblical/159559503.WFLAH

start with a review posted today saying "Excellent T-shirt for the Ted Lasso fan" and a few reviews below that there's one saying "My Charlieonnafriday t shirt was amazing" - so the reviews will only give you some idea when the generic product was introduced, not when a design was first put on that product.

I wish so much there was an exact date for when a particular design was added. And I wish that the artists included info on how designs were created.

All I have to go on is that listing of designs from newest to oldest, and the sudden change to more sophisticated images in more styles, very distinct styles.

On Twitter it's usually the professional artists - real artists - who can spot when AI art is ripping off a particular artist's work and selling it. They're very familiar with fellow artists' work.

I would be interested in knowing if a real artist, not an AI user, created the image in the OP.

A number of platforms have asked artists to say when AI is used to create an image, but not all platforms do, and even if they do, that request or requirement is often ignored by the person uploading the images.

to this Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/ohyana.co/

So, a store using AI to rip off real artists and sell through Redbubble.

https://www.redbubble.com/people/ohyana/shop#profile

really ironic considering they used AI and it used real artists' imagination.