This is so maddening.

That's dumb. If it's gonna be an option at all it should be an opt-in for it's use, and at least an option to be on all pieces.

But I'd personally be perfectly happy for any of my art to be used in AI learning sets overall as well as editing/remixing/etc., (preferably with credit) in general. -As if anyone ever would anyway(!)- Art is free, and should remain so. There's nothing to be gained with being too precious about one's art. Art is for sharing and in the joy of making it and in that sharing, and any broader spread only benefits the artist in the long run.

Glad you are okay with your content being used. I am not okay with ALL 3K of my content being used by ai programs, ESPECIALLY without my permission. Since DA automatically opted my whole gallery in along with every other person's work without even asking if that was okay with me. Not all of my Content is under Fair use such as my Commissions I have made for People and Personal art/comics/etc. Only my Fanart is fair use content, there is even a Copyright Marker on my artworks on DA specifying which content is NOT for use by anyone but the Artwork's owner recipient and Which ones are under Fair use for anyone to use.

Like I said, if they're going to have such a choice on their site, I agree that it should be opt in, and there should be a simple option for that to be applicable to all of your pieces if you wish.

Sadly this is happening on many sites. I know Insta and Twitter months ago said that AI's using a person's art wasn't classed as theft. I know it sucks, but this NFT and AI movement is hitting every site. FA banned it but people post "edited" versions and get the thumbs up so what's the point?

How can it be theft when it takes away nothing from the original work? It only builds on it, at the very worst, much in the way that any artist builds on all the art that they've seen and their culture as they've encountered it in general. Almost no art is truly "Original".

Beyond that, the idea of AI "Stealing" people's work goes against commonly accepted art methods and trends since at least the beginning of the twentieth century and more. The effects of mass production/reproduction, particularly digital, have made the use of such things inevitable in the creation of art, and has had very little if any real negative effect on art. Techniques and practices such as collage, repurposing/reuse, detournement, sampling, editing, remixing, etc. are commonly accepted as valid art, and have only added to the overall richness and democratization of art and culture, and all of these things have only ended up adding to and building on the work of artists and usually contributing to their fame and pocketbooks in the long run.

This is also very sus regarding the fact that they insist "we arent going to add your art to any datasets!!!!" but then they made opt-out a manual option instead of the default. Essentially, "We're not going to steal you but we want you to let us if we do".

This sealed it tho. I'm gonna remove my dA account soon.

WHat I find even more grotesque is that This News is NOT sent out to the whole of DA. You only know if you are following the Team Account. and maaaybe they'll make it a small blip in the notification corner three weeks later.

So glad I noped out a month or so ago. First the "ad-friendly content" AI crap I noticed yesterday and now this...

Let's NOT forget that one of the big promises with Eclipse was that there would be no ads, and now not only are they planning to go back on that it seems, but they're using one of those bots like Tumblr and YouTube to auto-detect content that's "not advertiser friendly"--with the expected Eclipse jank, of course.

Anyway, another comment here made a good point from a slightly different viewpoint--there's not much to be gained from being too possessive about art (I'd add the point that newer artists also learn from observing what other, more experienced artists do), but this sort of thing should be opt-in by default, not opt-out, and should have an easily located option for "allow all" or "deny all".

It's likely they did it this way to discourage the long-time users with larger galleries from denying the AI algorithms (and equally likely that DA is just this inept, as many of their other decisions have demonstrated).
Assuming the denial request is even acknowledged by the data scraping software, of course...

So, the thing is that I have certain art that is Free for use like my fanart already. My fanart is all under fair use for whatever people want, and it's always been that way. But Commissions and my Personal art are not because they were made specifically for someone (Either myself or my commissioner). Most of my content is commissions or personal content that I don't want to be used willy nilly. I want the people I made the art for to be assured that their content I made for them is not being used in a way that they are not okay with without their knowledge. With this set up, DA ignored my fair use vs no use licenses I have attached to all my posts on there and opted all of my content in to be used in ai content without me being directly informed.

They actually got a lot of long time, and big time users of DA pretty upset. I'm pretty sure there wouldn't have been this sort of uproar if it was Opt-in. The biggest issue with all our art already being opted in is that there is a moment in time where there is "explicit permission" in a written format (albeit against our will) that ai are "allowed" to use our content from DA.

Did you see that DA apparently implemented "their own" (it's apparently a fork/rebrand of an existing one because all DA does anymore is copy other things without understanding them, ironic given DA's reputation for art thieves, recoloring and tracing) AI image generator?

So that's probably what this all was about, and as usual their entire implementation was totally wrong.

Between their recent mention of bringing back advertisements and their blatant endorsement of AI generated imagery, I am 100% certain that "Core Membership" sales have dried up, potential sponsors have seen the uproar over the site's state and noped out (I have a friend that gets hyped over every single one of those contests and even he says he hasn't seen one in a long time), and this is some sort of last-ditch attempt at "quantity over quality" monetization by having as many pages as possible they can place ads on.

(Not meant to be a dig at ads, I understand the need to make money to keep a site running, but rather the approach they are taking toward that end.)

I did. RJ Palmer had an interview with DA to try to bite at them for answers, and they admitted that their ai was built off another ai that previously scraped people's content on DA without permission. They basically forced "consent" so they could "legally" publish their ai. I really am very curious to see how all of this is going to proceed in a LEGAL sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvd.....hannel=Rendoas

Okay someone broke this down on the site but.

To clarify: DeviantArt's specific AI does not use your art, and the opt-out stuff is so other third party generators don't use it (though they're probably already using it anyway)

All Artwork is AUTOMATICALLY opted in for ai to use your content. You have to individually click the Opt Out button on every single artwork to opt out of it. I have 3k artworks in my gallery and an arm injury.

I have nearly 10k on one account, I get it.

But what I've seen is it's third party not Deviantart itself. The users art isn't in the DA AI.

Doesn't make it ANY better. Everyone's art right now is opted in for ai use, and ai bots are probably just going to use that tag to grab everyone's art right now.

Tbh since the first AI dropped for public use, people's art has been used and I've seen it done on Twitch with mostly popular artists like Griffsnuff during one of those "AI random ideas" things. It's been rampant. DA is but another drop in the big, vast bucket.

Yeah I just saw their post on Twitter... I'm also very upset. No email? Nothing more official? Why can't I opt out account wide? This is so dumb and I mostly commission art right now. So it's going to make it harder. ;_;

Wait. How do I opt out? I don't see any option anywhere.

each individual artwork you need to go into edit for. There is a small little checkbox you have to click.

I found it. Thanks

Somebody found the mass ai opt out under account settings. I understand if you still don't trust dA, though.

https://www.deviantart.com/polymerc.....eral-936573457

It's an Opt Out, They still opted all artists Into having their content used by ai to begin with. They've caused a lot of damage and still went over users on consent of their content. Not to mention that since this is Opt Out, any dead or inactive users Cannot change their settings.

Not to be *that guy* because the anger is 100% warranted, but this morning I saw that they changed the setting to opt-out by default.

This is definitely the right move, as beyond a basic consent/transparency thing and respecting intellectual property rights and all that good stuff... what if an artist were deceased, or otherwise couldn't access their account to opt out if they wouldn't want their art used in such a way?

They still deserve every bit of anger they receive for making the initial decision they made.