ArtStation Anti-AI Protest

Submission 10,194

Part of a series on AI Art. [View Related Entries]

Overview

ArtStation Anti-AI Protest is a community protest against AI art on the art portfolio website ArtStation, owned by Epic Games, that started in mid-December 2022. The protest included artists posting the image with the word "AI" crossed out, reading, "No to AI Generated Images," and other versions of it. The protest became a viral topic of discussion in the artist community, with ArtStation responding with changes to their content policy, which were largely deemed insufficient.

Background

On December 9th, 2022, artist Dan Eder tweeted^[1] about AI art being featured on the main page of the art portfolio website ArtStation, writing, "putting something that was generated using a prompt alongside artwork that took hundreds of hours and years of experience to make is beyond disrespectful." The tweet gained over 1,800 retweets and 14,600 likes in one week.

On December 12th, 2022, artist Imogene Chayes posted^[2] an image with the word "AI" crossed out, reading "No to AI Generated Images," to her ArtStation account, gaining nearly 200 likes in four days (shown below). The image was designed by artist Alexander Nanitchkov.^[3]^[4]

On December 13th, artist Nicholas Kole posted the image on his ArtStation^[5] account, calling for the website to make a stand against AI with an official policy, and also tweeting about it on Twitter.^[6] The post gained over 4,200 likes in three days.

On December 13th, 2022, as the protest took on, the image comprised the most posts on ArtStation's trending page. On that day, artist Logan Preshaw tweeted^[7] a screenshot of the trending page, with the post gaining over 9,700 retweets and 99,500 likes (screenshot and tweet shown below, left and right).

More unique versions of the protest image were posted^[8]^[9] by artists (examples shown below).

Developments

On December 14th, 2022, ArtStation posted a FAQ in which the company addressed the concerns,^[10] replacing it with a reworded version on December 16th.^[11]

In the FAQ, ArtStation stated that AI art will not be banned from the site. The site added a "NoAI" tag, which explicitly disallows AI systems from using the content for learning, although the tag is not used by default. The site also promised to add functionality to hide AI-created imagery from the "Trending" tab.

The updated policy was deemed insufficient and criticized by multiple artists in the following days. For example, artist Karla Ortiz tweeted^[12] a screenshot of one FAQ section, commenting that she found the response "embarrassing." The tweet (shown below, left) gained over 860 retweets and 5,000 likes in two days. On December 15th, Nicholas Kole tweeted^[13] an updated protest image with the words "Round two. You're not listening" superimposed over the original (shown below, right). The post gained over 1,500 likes on ArtStation in one day.