#DO YOU HEAR YOURSELVES.

[pretty-little-martyr]

terfs: we should try and infiltrate trans men's spaces, and in this post where I detail how, I keep misgendering them and referring to them like lost stupid women

people on this website, somehow: This Is Trans Men's Fault For Speaking About The Transphobia They Face

[moonscape]

like idk maybe this is just me but i'd genuinely rather throw my loose change into something that could possibly be but is very unlikely to be a scam and just be like "oh well" if it does actually turn out to be a scam than try to denounce every single palaestinian that just wants to live in safety. tripling down on that behaviour is just fucking embarrassing. "it's not racist to be skeptical of donations asks" that's true but saying that a group of brown people are all hustlers running a mass scam ring is undoubtedly extremely racist you fucking clowns.

[dirtmound]

so now even "legitimate" artists aren't allowed to use AI (that you speculate to have been trained on sam's art despite the sarah examples having basically zero of sam's style marks) in any part of the creative process lest they face the wrath of mass downvoting? an artist using AI to speed up the illustrative process for a webtoon is now callout-worthy? your webtoons must be morally pure, drawn with only the divine tool that is the Apple Pencil?

On this week's episode of "Webtoon Controversies That Could Have Been Avoided If Only They Had Some Damn Quality Control"-

Oh boy, prepare yourselves, there's some TEA on this one.

Quantum Entanglement, a new Webtoon Originals series from creator Arts Angel (aka Sarah Ellerton) is uh... a teeny weeny painfully obvious that it was made with AI.

AI is getting better, but when it comes to comics, there are still a lot of "tells" you can pick up on once you know where to look. Hands are certainly one of them.

Not knowing how to draw hands efficiently and consistently is definitely an Artist Problem(tm) but it becomes a lot more obvious it was made by AI when you get weird little off-putting mistakes like a fingernail being just a little too long or missing joints (hot dog fingers, eyo) or the distinction between fingers not being clear.

But there's also hair and other detailed parts that are often lost in the translation process between prompt to final piece. Jewelry, text on a screen, phones, that sort of thing. The insinuation of a 'thing' is there, but it's like looking at it through a fishbowl.

And ultimately, a lot of AI art tends to just be a little too 'perfect'. Everything is just a little too smooth for it to look like it was naturally made by a person. Faces end up veering into the uncanny valley territory and there are inconsistencies between the eyes and the rest of the body. Backgrounds become lost in what I like to call "AI goop", becoming nothing more than weird blurred/filtered out insinuations of what's supposed to be behind the character.

Basically, at this point, it's undeniably clear that AI is being used to create this comic. While there are also plenty of signs in the handiwork that show a human was involved in some parts, there are other places that are undeniably filled in with the use of AI. So it's not necessarily a 100% made-by-AI comic, but it's absolutely AI assisted.

But what's REALLY absurd about this whole situation? The creator denies it. To the point of including a disclaimer in the first episode trying to "get ahead" of people who are assuming it's AI by saying, "No, it's not made with AI, here's the proof! Don't look at the blood on my hands or the body in the trunk of my car!"

Now, first off, the absolute absurdity of making yourself look guiltier by trying to prove your innocence before people have even started to suspect you... I'd like to think that this was edited into the first episode after the initial accusations started rolling in but considering it's an Originals series, it's hard to know if it was, as creators typically don't get as much control over just editing their episodes on the fly like Canvas creators do. Typically it's their editors who do that sort of thing for them. And even if it was edited in afterwards, it's still there for people who have no idea going into the comic blind and might not automatically assume it was made with AI, so it just looks like you're bringing up the potential of AI being used completely unprovoked. By planting the idea in your audience's brain that AI is even a question, you're making them suspect everything.

It's kind of like when Dream was suspected of cheating in a way-too-lucky-to-be-real speedrun of Minecraft a couple years back, so he went to all these painstaking efforts of hiring a quantum physicist to "prove" his innocence with a straight up THESIS documenting all of the reasons he couldn't have cheated through math and figures and jargon. Ironically, this just made Dream look guiltier, and sure enough, he eventually admitted he had cheated.

That said, did you notice something in that "art process" pic?

That finished panel isn't even what showed up in the final comic.

So the absurdity of this all, again, just makes Arts Angel look a lot more guilty of actually using AI, especially when it's basically undeniable in so many of those panels above. People don't paint like that.

But that brings us to talking about Sarah Ellerton, aka "Arts Angel", the creator. Many long-time readers of her work are defending this, claiming that she has, in fact, "always drawn like this".

What's insane? She actually is who she says she is. This isn't like some kid who came out of the woodwork with AI and claiming that they had 20 years of experience, Sarah Ellerton's main site, The Seraph-Inn, has been live and crawled by Wayback Machine as far back as 2005.

And you can see the art evolution over the years, starting with Inverloch-

-into Phoenix-

-and all the way to Immaterial-

But here's the thing about that last comic. The main protagonist is, apparently, the same girl from Quantum Entanglement, the newest installment in this series where it becomes abundantly clear the creator has started using AI.

You can see the effects of this being parsed through AI, because she's gone from being a unique character with two-toned hair and darker skin, to being turned into a generic Instagram anime girl. And lemme tell you, AI used in comics has NOT gotten better at depicting darker-skinned characters (I actually tested an AI-coloring tool WT was planning on putting out a year or two ago, it was uh... not great.)

But the most damning thing about Sarah?

She works in IT.

That on its own wouldn't be so telling if it weren't for the 20 years she clearly spent actually honing her craft, only to suddenly switch to using AI as a crutch.

Quantum Entanglement was picked up for Originals in July 2023. It launched two days ago, with four free to read episodes and 6 more under the FastPass paywall. Three months after it got picked up. That turnaround speed is insane for an Originals series. Now, I'm more inclined to believe that maybe she's using the exact same pages she used in the Canvas version (there's unfortunately no way of checking through Wayback, it never crawled the Canvas version, so unless someone has backups of the Canvas pages they're willing to share, we'll never know) but that short turnaround time is insane for a comic that's this insanely detailed. It likely means they didn't need much pre-production time to get a strong buffer going, and that it doesn't take them as long to produce these episodes on a weekly basis so they could be under way less crunch than creators who do this by hand.

By comparison, the winners of the Call to Action contest from last year are STILL working on their pre-production. Many other greenlit Canvas series are known for getting picked up and stuck in pre-production for several months and even a year or more simply due to how the company operates with when it chooses to launch these series and how much pre-production is necessary. Some creators have literally said that their pre-production was done, but WT still kept them waiting to launch. So three months for a freshly greenlit Canvas series to launch is NOT the norm.

All that said, I feel for the people who are trying to defend her. But it's so undeniably AI with the creator herself providing fake proof that it makes it really sad to think that this person was honing their craft for 20 years just to wind up utilizing AI. Being a good artist does not make you immune to the temptation of using cheap methods or developing bad habits. Going through "the struggle" does not make you immune to taking shortcuts that wind up cheapening your work or taking advantage of the work of others.

Now, maybe Sarah trained AI around her art. If this didn't play out the way it did, I'd be willing to give her benefit of the doubt and assume that. Training AI off your own work, while still up for debate as to how ethical that is, at least doesn't hurt other artists, because it's your own work the AI is "stealing". There are definitely ways AI could be used to make life easier for artists without replacing the art process entirely, the same way artists have learned to use 3D assets and digital art filters to make their process more efficient and boost the quality of their art up to the next level.

But the fact that she's being so cagey over it, claiming she's not using AI period when she very clearly is, providing "proof" that actually proves she definitely used AI, while operating under a penname that's strangely similar to a name Grimes - former tech wife of Elon Musk and staunch supporter of AI - used for one of her studio albums-

- that's what makes it a lot more clear she's using it maliciously.

The AI is very likely trained off another artist's work. Maybe someone whose art style is similar enough to hers that she could integrate it into her own and pass it off as legitimate. Someone whose art style is cartoonish but still modern, like if Disney made anime. Someone who's so prolific and consistent in their stylization that training an AI off it would seem like a no brainer to those who want to replicate that style quickly and easily.

Damn. What a disappointment. Do better, Sarah.

And for god's sakes, Webtoons, pay more fucking attention. I've been steadily picking away at moving the entirety of my comics over to other platforms on a weekly schedule, but at this point I kinda just wanna dump the last 30 or so chapters onto ComicFury all at once so I can ditch this platform for good, especially if it turns out AI comics getting greenlit is a feature, not a bug. The ratings for Quantum Entanglement have dropped significantly overnight, now sitting around 5.09 and still dropping, but is Webtoons going to do anything about it? That remains to be seen.

[emily84]

today is holocaust remembrance day. without ifs or buts and without condition.

today we remember all the Jewish people, the Rromani people, the physically and mentally disabled, political prisoners, queer people, journalists and activists, intellectuals and writers and artists, and all the common people, every single person that lost their lives or loved ones or a part of themselves to Nazifascism.

[reality-detective]

Senator Kennedy explain how it works at 21 weeks. This is painful to watch but this is exactly what Kamala Harris supports 🤔

[pokemon-radical-red]

Trans men are literally just a joke to so many people. I’ve seen multiple Tik Toks like “When the trans man with HUGE BOOBS(!!!) in a crop top gets mad at me when I misgender him.”

One of these had the OP’s comment of “Why are so many people in my comment section being transphobic towards trans men?”

It’s because you made this a safe space for people who hate trans men!!! You decided to describe trans men’s bodies in dehumanizing, sexualizing ways to make a joke out of us! In what world does “smh trans men are SO EMOTIONAL and expect us to instantly know everything about them and cater to them even though it makes my life so hard (I have to change a word),” not come off as repackaged sexism?

If you say that this is a made up situation, these people will immediately claim that this happens and has happened to them. It’s interesting that either they’re lying or they’re admitting that they’re sexualizing a real man’s body in a way that could easily trigger his gender dysphoria.

[clairenatural]

one can only imagine the plight of supernatural fans who think dean winchester is heterosexual. struggling daily under the watchful eye of big gay destiel, whispering affirmations to each other under the cover of private discords, tiptoeing around conventions in fear of hearing someone say "bisexual" out loud. only they and they alone can understand the horrors that jensen ackles must endure, having fans express how important he is to them and suggest that a fictional character he played may be queer.

[scramratz]

just because you're black doesn't mean that wasn't an insanely fucking weird thing to say dude. like I'm not here to talk about robots. it's obviously not just a joke. it's coming from actual animosity. someday there's going to be some new outclass that's considered "below" you somehow and jokes are how you're going to start snowballing into real bigotry. you're not immune to being an asshole.

What do you think the new outclass is gonna be?

[edenfenixblogs]

I’m just sad tonight. One of my friends thanked me for educating her about antisemitism and then stopped talking to me completely in December.

My former roommate nannied for Jewish families and worked at a Jewish school despite being a goy. I lived with her for 6 years and invited her to Hanukkah and other holidays. I said I had a question for her about Palestine (that’s it. That’s all). She told me she’d reach out to me when she had the headspace for it. She hasn’t reached out to me but she has posted several times about Palestine.

So many people who said they’d always be there for me suddenly disappeared when I actually told them I needed them and idk that it will ever stop hurting tbh.

[useless-englandfacts]

anti-trans activists: supporting trans rights is misogynistic!

also anti-trans activists: trans women can’t compete in chess tournaments because we think trans women are men and men are obviously intellectually superior to women

[gingerswagfreckles]

Hey remember when "I am a Nazi" "I love Hitler" Kanye West posted the Literal Exact Same Image on Twitter and got directly banned by Elon Musk for being a Nazi because even Elon Musk couldn't pretend this isn't Nazism. Remember that. Good times.

[determinate-negation]

so much sympathy is allowed for settlers and western tourists to do naive, thoughtless, arrogant, dangerous things not see these actions as such and mourn it as a shocking tragedy when something happens but personally even if i had been born in israel i would have the self awareness to not go to a party right outside of the largest open air prison in the world

[j-ustkeepdriving]

People calling todays race boring. Checo did NOT drive into Lewis within three seconds of the race starting, pit to get a new front wing, drive into KMag, pit AGAIN to get a second front wing, retire, get put back in the car, sit there in the garage for fifteen minutes waiting to be released, make a surprise guest appearance on lap 42 to do one (1) lap, come back into the pits to serve a five second penalty, and then retire AGAIN for the race to be called boring. Have some RESPECT

[killmymind]

it’s okay to admit you’re wrong about a celebrity btw.. not everyone is secretly gay and pushed into the closet. just because you want his relationship with maya to be fake doesn’t make it fake. stop making up excuses to defend an abuser and believe women for once 👍

[starlightomatic]

Why is it that it never seems to occur to y'all that Jews who oppose the war in Gaza, or name the Nakba or the apartheid system in the West Bank as things that exist and are bad, or oppose Zionism, are doing it out of actual sincere desire for justice and ethics?

Why do you always assume we're doing it to be "good Jews" or to save our skins or for social media clout? It's never occurred to you that we oppose the war in Gaza because people in Gaza are suffering and we actually sincerely care about that?

Honestly the level of false motives you ascribe to us would be antisemitic if it was coming from goyim.

And it's just disrespectful. Feel free to disagree with us. But please for half a second assume that we're not doing this to try to earn cookies from goyim.

[feddy-34]

i love this new leftist phenomenon of pretending that ukraine isn't being currently invaded by russia because of russia's imperialist policies but instead because of this vague notion of NATO expansionism

like it's cool for ukraine to (be forced to) stay within russia's sphere of influence but choosing to join NATO???? you go too far!!!!