I Found the Most Egregious AI Art on Kickstarter

Kickstarter just approved a Comics project with the worst disparity between AI covers & interior art.

Supra Cat

So, I navigated to Kickstarter to check out new Comics launches, as I do every day for the purpose of researching and encapsulating the new comics projects over at The Comic$ Crowd. My process is to open each new campaign and skim the project page to get an idea of what’s being offered and how likely it is a real comic will result from the information presented. As noted in my last post, a small percentage of those new comics are of the NSFW/porn variety, so it’s no surprise when those show up. It’s also no surprise when a portion of those utilize AI art, especially for the nude/provocative covers. It’s a style so familiar and homogeneous that it’s easily recognizable. Most of the creators using AI for these purposes self-report it, as required by Kickstarter, but it’s on the honor system, so it doesn’t always get honestly denoted.

Today, being Thanksgiving in the U.S., I expected a trickle of project launches yesterday, and I was right. I immediately noted the likely-AI cheesecake art on one of the project cover images in the search array and didn’t think much of it. Glancing through the distinctly unimpressive other 5 launches, I expected more of the same from Supra Cat, described simply as an NSFW comic. Sure enough, scroll after scroll of AI-produced nude covers featured voluptuous female bodies on broad display. I’ll share a couple of the clothed options below to give you the idea.

A clothed cover option from Supra-Cat

Nothing shocking, right? Right. That is, until you scroll WAY down the Kickstarter page and find the interior art samples:

This is not a joke.

Quite the style disparity, eh? To the credit of creator, the aptly-monikered “DirtyStar”, at least there are interior art pages to view and on which to make a backing decision, which is more than can be said for half of NSFW Kickstarter comics. However, a quick, glancing comparison of the two images above throws wide the doors of the raging debate about the use of AI art in comics and, more specifically, on Kickstarter.

AI Art & Kickstarter

For some months now, Kickstarter requires creators to self-report any use of AI art, as well as the creator’s ownership of the AI-produced assets. For Supra-Cat, DirtyStar claims to use, “AI-generated art for parts of the covers and some interior elements. My process begins with designing the visual elements of each image, and then I use AI in areas that can help me create high-quality content that will bring value to my Backers.”

Regarding ownership of the assets manipulated by the AI, DirtyStar asserts, “I am the sole artist on this project. I use royalty-free images and many of my own works, and I refine everything myself to complete the covers.”

So, you’re telling me that this…

…was “refined” into this…

GTFO. Lying by omission is still lying, and there’s a LOT of process omission happening here. In particular, we’re missing the verbal/textual prompts beginning with T & A it took to “design the visual elements of each image.” Come on, man.

Why This is a Problem

This project is the prime example of why real artists who make real art with their real brains and real hands decry the use of AI art on the daily. Some wannabe jackass spends an hour on an AI porn generator emptying his spank bank image file with high hopes of filling his actual bank with a cheap shot cash-in, like so many we see weekly on Kickstarter, while the true talents take days and weeks of work and imagination and correcting errors to create a piece of true originality. Remember those higher success rates and funding levels for NSFW comics that I reported last week? This pale attempt to duplicate that financial haul is a direct result of mimicry of that model and Kickstarter’s failure to police it in their project approval process.

Yes, there are digital artists capable of crafting beautiful, NSFW images of the human body just as perfect and alluring as those AI-generated porn ads shown above, and they deserve our support. Merit via talent deserves to be celebrated. While I, as a writer with no real visual art talent, could easily duplicate the quality of the interior art from Supra Cat, I could never hope to produce anything approaching an actual sexy depiction of another human being that would incentivize another human being to purchase it, and I shouldn’t use AI to do so and then claim that I’m “the sole artist.” And neither should the good Mr. DirtyStar.

Real human artists deserve our support and admiration, neither of which is needed or deserved by no-talents playing dress-up or dress-down with AI paper dolls.