PUNK A.I. ARTISTS ARE ON THE RISE: HOW TO SUFFOCATE THE SLOP IN YOUR SCENE

Contributed by Hobbes

A.I. punk artists have become increasingly prevalent in our spaces. If you are online or on social media, you are likely following them without realizing. The amount of A.I. art that has already been printed on tape and record releases is truly heartbreaking. 

Now that government spending on Artificial Intelligence has increased by approximately 900% in the last three years, even good old artistic suffering has become automated. 


In a perfect world we’d take punk off of social media and you’d hire someone you know personally to draw for your band. Until that point, here is my essential list of checks you need to make before accidentally buying from or following punk A.I. artists.



Not one tip alone is enough to tell you anything definite. I recommend using this full arsenal of checks to make an informed decision. 

TIMELINE

It is imperative that you look all the way back through a new artist’s portfolio, to before A.I. image generation became widespread. If the artist started making art around 2023, this is your first clue. Around this time, neural networking and image generation tools became readily available, commonly used, and insidiously integrated into artistic communities.

FREQUENCY

Art takes time. There’s a reason for that old movie trope of moody artists falling asleep on their work. If the account in question is banging out commission after commission, with a brief “DM for info” profile and “SOLD, SOLD, SOLD” captions, this is another clue. Not even an overly caffeinated, hypomanic, insomniac human artist on Vyvanse can mass produce at that rate. If it's too easy and quick, it's probably being generated by A.I.

NATURAL PROGRESSION

Human artists hone their skill over time, it’s unavoidable. In a human’s portfolio, when you look back to their earlier work you will see a natural progression of skill over time. Their style will evolve naturally as they get inspired by new things. This is absent from an A.I. “artist”’s page. Their skill level will be a plateau of sorts because it is created by Artificial Intelligence. They reveal a sudden skill level and remain at that exact same skill level while they crank out piece after piece, often in the same style! Which leads us to…

NEVER BREAKING THE FORMAT: STYLE VS FORMULA

Human artists often have styles and tastes that evolve, but an A.I. artist will have a formula. Most A.I. creators won’t break the format they’ve found that works. Look for a wall of monotony. For example: A grainy Xerox’d line drawing of bricks breaking and a barbed wire fence, followed by some iteration of that exact format for all subsequent pieces.

FILTERS

Throughout history, filters have been a source of contention. Whether it’s overdoing it with chorus pedals or giving yourself a digital facelift. The same applies to digital art. If the awesome gruesome skull laden art you’re looking at is so full of filters that you can’t possibly imagine how someone might have drawn that, it’s likely that someone did not draw that. Sloppy A.I. collage is often covered up with grainy, chalky, pancaked on filters. 

EVIDENCE

Human proof is very easy to find, if it exists. Again, human art takes time. It is very common for artists to post pencil sketches and progress videos to their social media, if only for the simple purpose of showing clients that their deadline is not being ignored. I can’t count the amount of times I have seen friends bringing their half finished drawings to a show, scrambling to make their deadline. The responsible thing to do in this modern day of A.I. is to check, and even to ask for proof of ink to paper when you commission or follow an artist. To counteract the age of the Terminator, myself and friends who draw have been sharing a lot more progress footage in order to provide transparency. This transparency is the greatest tool we have to move forward.

A.I. QUICK TELLS:

These tells will likely expire as artificial intelligence gets smarter, but for now here are some quick giveaways that A.I. slop is being served to you on a plate. This is not a replacement for greater A.I. literacy. 


1. Chains: This one is fun to spot. A.I. often draws chains that fully look like jelly beans. You may laugh (as you should), but one of these three examples below is actively for sale on a punk A.I. artist’s account.

2. Detail Inconsistencies: If the background is much more detailed than the foreground, this is sometimes due to an A.I. generated background being pasted behind the main subject. You rarely see this in human-made drawings as it’s not how vision works (unless you’re far-sighted and don’t have your glasses). Another thing A.I. struggles with is consistent lighting. Check the direction and intensity of the light across the image. Does the background match the foreground? Here, a skinhead has harsh, top-down lighting, while the highly detailed background shows none of the same environmental light. These inconsistencies are a clear giveaway.

3. A.I. Slop Texture: This is an understated and very important category. Every surface that you see has its own unique texture. Every texture reacts to light in a different way. A.I. gets extremely confused by this process and will render an image of a “drawing” with a very signature A.I. crunchy mush texture that gets placed over the surfaces it’s not confident in. It counts on your ignorance to not notice things like window cracks on human skin, spotted denim, and wiggly rocks. Here are some examples of Artificial Intelligence’s crunchy mush. As a bonus, I’ve included some bricks that not only have the confused A.I. texture, but are also a glaring OSHA violation.

If the idea of A.I. literacy is giving you a headache, you’re not alone. Luckily, punk is a friendship-based community and you are absolutely encouraged to have real conversations with the artists you know personally to get educated on their process when you hire them to draw for your band. Be mindful that if you remove the friendship aspect from your process – i.e. you want to hire that “cool” mysterious online guy everyone is hiring to do their grainy looking flyers – you might just be hiring an A.I. artist who’s great at self promotion. 

All in all, it might be our own fault as punks for being so predictable and easy to please. Give us a gross looking brick wall with a hole in it and we’re happy. We must, however, never allow the process of creating said ugly bricks to become automated by those who would exploit our trust and ignorance. Expect proof of process, become literate in identifying A.I. slop, and if you don’t draw already - learn to draw before it becomes a lost art.