2026-08-18

I would never accuse anyone of using AI

I know, I know, we're all tired of everyone writing about AI. It's all the same things, same opinions, over and over again. But I still felt compelled to write this because I saw some people — a lot of people, honestly — confidently say how they can identify AI-generated text or images, and teaching you the "tells." Which I hate.

The two categories, text and images, are different but still basically similar, but I have stronger feelings towards text because telling AI text affects non-native English speakers and non-neurotypical people way more. I shall always defend the SANCTITY of my precious and beloved and can never do no wrong em dashes and semicolons, but there's a really good article I saw once: I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. Most of the points I want to make are made in the article already. People think they can tell, from signs like em dashes, rule of threes, or whatnot, but actually doing so only ever hurts real people. Which I guess is the central point. That accusing people of using AI only ever hurts real people.

As for art, same goes. Even if the art is painfully AI and I'm 100% certain, as long as it's not disclosed, I'd still keep it in my heart. It's probably an algorithm thing but I had honestly saw more people making posts on how to tell AI art, as well as artists making a video responding to AI accusations, than actual AI art. But maybe I saw some AI art and I couldn't tell! But it doesn't matter, because accusing people's art of being AI based on tiny details hurts real artists. I've seen callout posts which are basically taking a really well-drawn piece of artwork, circling seemingly random spots, with generic annotations like "???," "obviously AI," "what?" …Which, I have to assume it's just some troll, or at best someone who really has no idea how art works. That elbow is perfectly fine why are you ???ing it. "???" isn't even criticism it's just a bunch of question marks like babygirl are you confused? That's an elbow. Humans usually have two of those; check your arms.

I digress, but still, things like that make the accused scramble to prove themselves. Which is a big thing against artists in this accusation, which is, normally the burden of proof should be on the accuser, but in this case, no accuser can ever give out definitive proof that the art is AI, unless they caught a picture over the artist's shoulder as they typed the prompt into their computer, or maybe the artist admitted elsewhere. With that, the "typical signs" and "tells" and badly annotated callouts become the "accuser's proof," requiring artists to show their own counterproof when they should not have the obligation to.

This post was basically triggered by seeing a lot of "guess which one is AI!" type videos I came across a lot. Sometimes it was two similar images side by side; sometimes it was a rapid succession of different images, some AI and some not. These videos frustrate me to no end because their purpose is essentially to invite people to scrutinize random images they come across by showing you how AI art can look the exact same as human art. When I first saw a video like this, I was shocked by how exactly similar the AI art and human art presented in the video was (also the caption said all the AI art were from Pinterest they didn't generate them themselves like are we inventing ethically-sourced AI art now like those ethically-slaughtered animals), the next time I saw an art piece drawn in a similar style my heart automatically lurched and I was like "is this AI?" It's not funny! Not funny at all!

This reminded me of that experiment where researchers gave people expensive and cheap wine multiple times, but sometimes lying about how much the wine cost. Their brains were scanned to see if they enjoyed the wine. The results showed that they typically enjoyed the wine when they were told it was expensive, regardless of whether it really was expensive (Plassmann et al., 2008).^[1] So I'm wondering, would being told whether an art is AI or not change how people enjoy the art in a similar fashion? It obviously has an effect on me so I try not to let it. Obviously you can't give the same person the same piece of artwork twice like they did with wine though, but still. I've definitely seen people enjoying AI art up until they were informed that it was AI, at which point their attitude about it makes a complete turn. Which further proves how you really cannot discern the two.

Come to think of it, I've seen two different attitudes, one being "AI art is sneaky and hides among human art and you have to be really careful and vigilant" and the other being "AI art is inherently soulless and bad and generic with a very distinct artstyle," which is funny because either one disproves the other and clocking certain styles as "AI artstyles" hurts people who actually draw in that style. Also I know it's a slogan and slogans aren't meant to be nuanced, but still I'd like to ask what is a "soul." Obviously they don't mean our beloved TIR souls, but I can't think of any definition of "soul" that makes, say, Stonetoss's comics worth more than Tung Tung Tung Sahur. Like, how would my beloved, glorious, magnificent, splendid, and enlightening Triple T in all its wooden (probably?) glory EVER be on the same level, let alone worse, than whatever that guy is drawing? Okay I'm just a brainrotten kid but the point I'm trying to make is, this slogan just makes less sense every time I think about it. Maybe "soul" just means "the knowledge that the art isn't AI." That makes it make way more sense: "AI art is AI art." Hard to argue with that.

The truth is, we can't tell, and being careful and vigilant about it only decreased my enjoyment and made me suspicious of works that artists put a lot of time and effort into, when I could've just sat back and enjoyed the art. But after seeing many times people carefully tearing apart perfectly good artwork from artists I've followed for a while, going on and on about signs of AI art or writing (especially at ESLs!) while making those artists and writers prove themselves that they're legit, I was like "is my moral framework really consistent right now" which honestly a question I should ask myself more often. And my conclusion was no, so I changed my mind and was like, I'm just gonna encourage people to disclose AI usage. Which is what I did on the OC Webring. I had seen a submission once that made the back of my head scream "this is definitely AI" so I asked the site owner about it. Then I thought about this and I was like, so what? Their OCs are their own. There's no reason to reject them from the webring. (Actually I just went to check just now and their site isn't found anymore. Either they deleted or moved URLs. Might need to contact them. Arrrrgh I hate talking to people)

Another point I'm inserting here because I don't know where else to put it. Artists panicked and said art was dead when photography came along too, but that merely gave birth to impressionism or whatnot, and now photography is also considered a form of art. If you think human art truly has some sort of "soul," then you must also believe that art is not dying, art will not die, and art cannot die for as long as humans still exist, so it is not under any sort of threat that gives the need to point fingers at other artists.

Even if this might sound like some daydream, but I think we need to — can, even — foster an environment where people always disclose it when they use AI, but that can only be achieved if people stop treating AI-generated content as inherently below any sort of human-made output. I mean, just remember Stonetoss is still drawing comics.^[2] And I think I may have just been hanging in the Anglo internet too much. On Bilibili, there's a field where you can disclose that the video has AI-generated content, which puts a little sign near the title that says so. Youtube does too but it also has an auto-detector the workings of which I don't know. Itch.io does this too.^[3] In a lot of advertisements I've also noticed AI notices in corners, which I guess is a legal requirement given how semi-transparent and unnoticeable the advertisers try to make it. Simply having all AI content disclosed properly would, um, probably? stop people from going "errrrm this looks AI!" Or maybe I'm just hoping.

Ultimately my point is, no matter how much I'm certain something is AI, I would not say it out loud, because I always have a capacity to hurt a real artist in doing so. I just want people to stop going "uuhhh guys I think this is AI look at the tells" because it only hurts real people and is simply just really annoying.

And if you got here and still haven't read Olang's article, please go and read it.

• H. Plassmann, J. O'Doherty, B. Shiv, & A. Rangel, Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105 (3) 1050-1054, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0706929105 (2008).