A supporting data point: I made a series of furry illustrations last year that combined AI-generated imagery with traditional illustration and 3d modelling- compositing together parts of a lot of different generations with some Blender work and then painting over that. Each image took maybe 10-15 hours of work, most of which was just pretty traditional painting with a Wacom tablet.
When I posted those to FurAffinity and described my process there, the response from the community was extremely positive. However, the images were all removed a few weeks later for violating the site’s anti-AI policy, and I was given a warning that if I used AI in any capacity in the future, I’d be banned from the site.
So, the furiously hardline anti-AI sentiment you’ll often see in the furry community does seem to be more top-down than grassroots- not so much about demand for artistic authenticity (since everyone I interacted with seemed willing to accept my work as having had that), but more about concern for the livelihood of furry artists and a belief that generative AI “steals” art during the training process. By normalizing the use of AI, even as just part of a more traditional process, my work was seen as a threat to other artists on the site.
I’d guess your work is in the blended category where the people currently anti-ai are being incorrect by their own lights, and your work did not in fact risk the thing they are trying to protect. I’d guess purely ai generated art will remain unpopular even with the periphery, but high-human-artistry ai art will become more appreciated by the central groups as it becomes more apparent that that doesn’t compete the way they thought it did. I also doubt it will displace human-first art, as that’s going to stay mildly harder to create with ai as long as there’s a culture of using ai in ways that are distinct from human art, and therefore lower availability of AI designed specifically to imitate the always-subtly-shifting most recent human-artist-made-by-hand style. It’s already possible to imitate, but it would require different architectures.
A supporting data point: I made a series of furry illustrations last year that combined AI-generated imagery with traditional illustration and 3d modelling- compositing together parts of a lot of different generations with some Blender work and then painting over that. Each image took maybe 10-15 hours of work, most of which was just pretty traditional painting with a Wacom tablet.
When I posted those to FurAffinity and described my process there, the response from the community was extremely positive. However, the images were all removed a few weeks later for violating the site’s anti-AI policy, and I was given a warning that if I used AI in any capacity in the future, I’d be banned from the site.
So, the furiously hardline anti-AI sentiment you’ll often see in the furry community does seem to be more top-down than grassroots- not so much about demand for artistic authenticity (since everyone I interacted with seemed willing to accept my work as having had that), but more about concern for the livelihood of furry artists and a belief that generative AI “steals” art during the training process. By normalizing the use of AI, even as just part of a more traditional process, my work was seen as a threat to other artists on the site.
I’d guess your work is in the blended category where the people currently anti-ai are being incorrect by their own lights, and your work did not in fact risk the thing they are trying to protect. I’d guess purely ai generated art will remain unpopular even with the periphery, but high-human-artistry ai art will become more appreciated by the central groups as it becomes more apparent that that doesn’t compete the way they thought it did. I also doubt it will displace human-first art, as that’s going to stay mildly harder to create with ai as long as there’s a culture of using ai in ways that are distinct from human art, and therefore lower availability of AI designed specifically to imitate the always-subtly-shifting most recent human-artist-made-by-hand style. It’s already possible to imitate, but it would require different architectures.