As some have already noticed Furaffinity wants to publish an update regarding upload rules on 7.6. or 6.7 2023.
The new rules are already visible here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10560608/

Link to Inkbunny: https://inkbunny.net/PKMnx

These rules have met with criticism from many users. In addition, there is much confusion about what exactly is meant by "childlike bodies".
I have contacted FA support several times and asked them about a few characters and my content.
For example Hollow Knight and Cult of The Lamb characters.
That was about two weeks ago. To date I have not received a response from FA.
Especially since I have allegedly already violated the rules and I have therefore received a warning.
So should mean that the next violation of the rules my gallery could be deleted.

For the update I have removed some stuff from my gallery.
Most of it you can find again on Inkbunny.
Link: https://inkbunny.net/PKMnx

I would like to ask you, if you follow me here, also follow me on Inkbunny or one of the other alternatives.
To be on the safe side.

You can find me on Inkbunny among others.
Here I will upload everything that I can't post on FA.
It's worth to make an Inkbunny account, because many other artists also upload their content there now.
If you don't like certain content on Inkbunny, you can mute certain tags.
Link to Inkbunny: https://inkbunny.net/PKMnx

Alternatively, you can find me on Itaku.
Link to Itaku: https://itaku.ee/profile/pkmnx

I'll also try to become active on Twitter at some point.
Link to my Twitter: https://twitter.com/PKM_art

On Furaffinity I will continue to post stuff.
So don't worry that I will become inactive here.


Summarized again:

Link to Inkbunny: https://inkbunny.net/PKMnx

Link to Itaku: https://itaku.ee/profile/pkmnx

Link to Twitter: https://twitter.com/PKM_art

Attention artists: Glaze is a tool that protects your artwork from exploitation by AI models.
The tool adds noise to your images, which the viewer does not recognize but makes your works unusable for AI models.
The whole thing has also been tested and works quite well so far.
Whether you are a painter or a 3D artist, I recommend using it.
If you know artists, please recommend this tool to them.
Fight back against exploitation by AI!

Link:
https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/

Hello,
I noticed that I only have FA as a platform at the moment.
That's why I have additionally set up InkBunny and Twitter.
There I will post my artwork and sketches.
My profile on those sites is still under construction at the moment, so it's a bit empty there at the moment.


InkBunny: https://inkbunny.net/PKMnx

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PKM_art


I would be happy if you follow me there too in case I get banned on FA. (Just to be on the safe side)
Don't worry on FA I will stay active.

After the FurAffinity update I had to delete a lot of stuff.
Stuff that had a lot of comments, favorites and probably fans.
So I uploaded all my stuff to Google Drive just in case Fa changes the rules again.
There are a lot of works in the Drive folder, including the deleted ones,
the link to it is at the bottom.

And now for the part where I need your help:
I urgently need a backup site where I can upload my content alternatively.
It should be a site that also has some visitors so that others can discover my art.
As my own suggestion I would have DeviantArt.
However, DA has been extremely negative lately.
(So not only lately)
I therefore urgently need an alternative site to upload.
(PixiV is too complicated for me)


Now I want to give my opinion on the rule change.
Please let it rain brains...
I understand that Fa doesn't want to have stuff on the side that affects children.
But: I just deleted stuff from among others Ralsei, Berdly and co. Completely harmless stuff.
Maybe I have to delete my Sonic stuff soon.
No one is hurt, abused or threatened by it.
It is fictional stuff, none of it has anything to do with reality.

If someone once said that this site should get on the level of Artstation or DeviantArt, then that was meant technically, not from the level of decisions.

I could rant on, but I'm tired of seeing art sites go down the drain because of bad decisions.
I hope to find an alternative quickly.
I will not leave FA, but I will build a backup on a second site.


Link to Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....7v?usp=sharing

Commissions:
Closed
Info Journal: NULL

Contact:
- You can contact me via DM, I will soon open an extra Discord profile for messages.
- DM me for my business Discord account.
Please no RP or requests please.


Programs I use:
- Clip Studio Paint EX
- Photoshop CC


PS: F*ck AI!

That's right, Clip Studio Paint now wants to use AI as well.
The really shady AI generator SD.
Source: https://twitter.com/FirriApril/stat.....81524165349376
I have already written enough journals why AI is just not a tool and why it is dangerous for us artists.

I don't recommend using the latest version of CSP.
(If you haven't already been scared off by CSP's false promises about subscription models).
It's a real shame how this is developing with the AIs, I thought the DeviantArt thing should have scared many artists away from AIs but apparently the developers of Clip think otherwise.
Say what you will about Adobe.
But at least they show how to use AI properly, not by replacing artists, but by helping graphic designers, etc.

Link to my last journal about DeviantArt and their AI: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10379010/

Please remember: AI stuff is not art, AI users are not artists, and AI steals from artists.
I will let you know about updates here.

That's right, DeviantArt also wants to get into the AI art business and make money from it later.
For this, DeviantArt takes all works on their platform for their dataset.
(Source: https://twitter.com/DKDevilArt/stat.....37865622114304
https://www.deviantart.com/team/jou.....amUp-933537821)
If you don't want this, you will have to reset this for all your works on the platform.
(Source: https://twitter.com/arvalis/status/.....32368827740160
https://twitter.com/arvalis/status/.....49910216560641)
I recommend, stay away from this dirt platform.
There are now enough reasons to hate them (youth protection).
By now everyone should have understood that art-AI are the last and its operators only want to make profit from stolen datasets.

Defend yourselves against it, delete your DA account and upload your works somewhere else instead.
There are enough alternatives, FA, Weasyl etc..

In my last journal I explicitly commented on the topic of art-AIs: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10369072/
I would generally recommend to stay away from art-AIs, they harm creativity and art.
In the meantime, artists are being attacked on platforms because they waste their time drawing instead of using an AI.
Even great deceased artists like Kim Jung Gi are now being fed into an AI (without consent).
(Source: https://youtu.be/-6HAsaDwzrI)
I find this extremely disgusting, it can't go on like this.

To all the artists out there:
Stay strong and don't let this get you down.



####### Important Update: #######

DeviantArt now has a checkbox to keep all your images out of AI datasets.
BUT ATTENTION, this is currently not valid for DeviantArt's own AI!
If you don't want DA to use your data, you have to fill out a document and wait up to 10 business days.
(Source: https://twitter.com/endwa1ker/statu.....36936508370944)

I would like to ask and advise everyone to delete everything there and deactivate their account. Use other sites
DeviantArt just sucks.

Also, they have treated various famous artists on Twitter like babies and later deleted these posts again.
I am simply speechless over such a shit.
Fuck you DeviantArt.

Actually, I'm not someone who does journals or does activism. And I know that I might make myself unpopular with many by doing so. But lately I see more and more people using AI art "tools" and publishing their work online. Among them are also well-known artists of the fandom. Still other artists are critical of these developments. In this journal, I mainly want to educate why these AI tools are detrimental to creativity and the art scene in the longer term, and to educate about their risks and harms.
Everyone is affected by this issue: People who look at art, drawers, painters, 3D artists, animators, music artists and on. Everyone should at least think about it and reflect. If even one person at least thinks about it, I have already fulfilled my goal with my limited reach. And small forewarning: This is a very emotional topic for me and others, so I apologize in advance if I should have made someone sad with it.

If you prefer an opinion of an experienced artist, you can watch the following video about it: https://youtu.be/tjSxFAGP9Ss
I think the situation is very well described there and the arguments are solid.

What are art AIs and how do they work?
With art AIs, artwork can be created in seconds - if you have the computing power. Well, the artworks are not quite perfected yet and the works often look strange and "smeared". Nevertheless, they are impressive works and certainly impressive technology.
The technology is very interesting: For an AI to know what certain objects look like, it needs data, huge amounts of data. And these huge data sets consist of, you guessed it, artworks by other artists. This is where it starts to get problematic. Because this data consists mostly of artworks of other artists, which were fed into the machine without permission of the respective artists. Many images that were used there, you would not even be allowed to post on your site or something similar, but AI companies care very little.

Because no one who works for these companies is interested in art, nor has made art himself. Because the artists are indifferent to these people, otherwise they would not do that. These images are recognized and mixed/deformed/colored until a new different image is created. With some generators you can even see in small places how the picture was composed from other pictures (In this video among other things to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRhzK1KNd6s ). However, brush strokes, shading and other minor things from the original image are preserved. While it will be impossible or difficult in quantity to attribute these details to an artist, it has happened that real artwork by artists has been falsely labeled as AI art. What might be the reason for that? Well known artists are known and their works are often fed into the datasets. Since I don't want to drag these artists into this, I'll keep them anonymous here.
Fact is, works of other artists are used without consent to train an AI.

Another question would be: Is this art at all?
Quote Wikipedia: "Art is a human cultural product, the result of a creative process.[5] The work of art usually stands at the end of this process, but can also be the process or the procedure itself. Like art as a whole, the work of art itself is characterized by the interaction of content and form.[6] Practitioners of art in the narrow sense are called artists.
The original meaning of the term art was applied to all products of human labor (cf. artistry) as a contrast to nature, which is evident, for example, in plastics, artificial nutrition, artificial flavor, artificial intelligence."
Quote from: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunst [Translated]
Whether AI art is actually art is debatable. But the fact is that AI art takes real existing works of art and reproduces them "simply" mixed 1:1. A real artist however creates from e.g. a reference new. And even if the artist doesn't try hard, he will never reproduce the image 1:1 as an AI does for example. Moreover, I doubt that persons can express or identify with an AI, because an AI acts randomly. Meaning: the user of the AI application enters terms and possibly gives information about the arrangement, characters and color. However, an AI will always create a random work from this, based on already existing artwork. The AI anticipates all of the user's imagination. The AI will not create personalized works of e.g. a fursona, like you would get from a commission. The AI will put more of a result in front of you. The art was not created by a soul who had something in mind. AI art is created from a data set that pretends to have soul or feelings, or copied from other works. That's why AI images often seem so cold and strange.
That's why I say: No, AI art is not art for me.

Why are AIs dangerous to artists?
As mentioned earlier, AI art consists of stitched-together images of real-world datasets. In the future, users can have an image created to their liking in seconds. Think about it, everyone can do whatever they want at once without having learned art or rules of art just once.
Better yet, someone could feed AI your data and make artwork in your style. So why would humans need commission artists at all? And why would companies hire designers and concept artists when they could create anything with enough computing power and in one click, in seconds?! Yes many artists, designers and photographers will be unemployed as a result. Meanwhile, the AI companies are rubbing their hands together as they are likely to make enough money from businesses with a subscription service.

But I don't earn my money through art, I make art because I enjoy it. And yet it puts me at risk. Because art sites and art portals can be flooded with mass-produced AI-generated art.
Are you a young artist, did you dream of one day doing something or keeping up with the big guys? Have you always wanted to create a comic and make other people happy?
Then your dream will never come true. You can be happy if in the future a person discovers your art in this mass. Why would even one person be interested in your art that might be at an advanced level? People can see better AI art all over the site and if not, they just create some in seconds. Why would anyone still be motivated to make art if they get no recognition, no one comments or like/upvote, and no one cares about the art?
It boils down to the fact that art will die out. Sooner or later, everyone will lose the fun of drawing something by hand and that would be a terrible pity.

As a Watcher, why should I care?
"I don't care about the artists, because I just want to see art, no matter who created it." Yes, people are so selfish. However, there are problems for art connoisseurs as well. If you take a look at AI art, you realize it's kind of always the same. Completely clean shading, always almost the same art style. Nothing really special. And on top of that, you'll probably see a phenomenon that you often notice with particularly rich people. People lose the desire. Because if you can buy everything, then you first have terrible fun. But at some point you lose the desire. There is nothing more to look forward to, because you can just buy everything yourself quickly. There's no more anticipation and no more surprises. And this effect will also happen with AI art.
Example: a real artist announces a painting. The user reading this, however, can't wait and creates a similar painting quickly with AI. The user might enjoy it for a few seconds and create different variations of it. And when the artist finally presents the image, one is either disappointed because the AI has created better images or disappointed because the AI has already created similar images and one has somehow already seen the image through that.

What I'm saying is that AI art is causing stagnation in the creative world because now everything can be created instantly. Why have quality when you can have quantity?

Quote: "AI art is only a tool and will not replace the artist".
I love this argument, used especially on Reddit by the SD community, because it's bullshit. A hammer is a tool, A screwdriver is a tool, and so on. Imagine you work on an assembly line screwing Teslas together. You get pliers to remove batteries from e-cigarettes and install them into the battery of the Tesla. You get a rubber mallet because the body is dented in one spot, you get a net to remove all the steel balls from the shop, etc. In short, you get the tasks and the tools make it easier. Now a Teslabot comes and does your work now and can even do fun Fortnite dances while doing it. Elon gives you a kitchen sink and sends you home for good. Is this robot, a tool? No, because he now does your work and has made you useless. So he is a replacement. Do you understand the difference?

Quote: "But I can use AI for backgrounds, for example, then that's a tool!"
Yes, you can do that. But keep in mind: every time you use the AI or feed it with your data, it "learns". It gets better and better and becomes a greater threat to your existence and that of others. Every image you read in is used to make the AI even better. And to promote self-made images that contain AI art is not that clever, but to improve the AI yourself is stupid.

Quote, "Aren't you exaggerating a bit?"
I know that AI is still underestimated by many. The scary thing, however, is that creative content was actually considered non-automatable. Until now, people were sure that technology could only automate strongly logical processes. This means that there is now one less "hurdle" and art, music and speech are only perhaps the beginning. Perhaps many more jobs will be at risk in the future. As I said, big companies don't care about their workers, so why should they care? I also honestly don't know why people are hyping this so much, considering all the work AIs do is built on the involuntary work of real artists. Imagine a future where you always have to research whether the artist even did the work themselves or just had it generated via an AI.

Speaking of jobs in jeopardy, parts of the design industry are already in turmoil, at least judging by designers' reactions to these issues. When AI design came out, people talked about how incredibly new and fresh it was. Cosmopolitan even had an AI image on the cover of one of their magazines. One person entered a precise description into the AI generator and out came the cover image. But couldn't he have given that description to a designer? I think that AI design and art looks so "fresh" and different because it breaks certain rules. AI product design looks interesting, but doesn't seem very practical. AI art also looks interesting, but many rules, especially in composition, were not followed. I think this actually affects the art negatively. In addition, many of the AI-"art"-works always look the same, which certainly also has to do with the lack of creativity of the users.

The future of art
For artists to have any chance at all on the job market, they will have to work cheaper than their AI competitors, which will be difficult.
Nevertheless, it is possible. The textile industry, for example, was the first to be infiltrated by machines. At that time, cheap clothing could be produced quickly in England. But there was a change. Nowadays, clothes are mostly still sewn by hand...
...in Indian or Chinese sweat stores for a pittance under disastrous working conditions. Because such workers are simply cheaper than machines and their maintenance costs. Maybe our art and concept art will soon be produced in such sweat stores, I mean, the working conditions of some concept artists are already really bad, especially when I look in the direction of Blizzard. Is this really the future?

But what actually happens to the laid-off workers? SD says: "They have to reorient themselves and look for other jobs!"
Now, however, relatively many become unemployed. Some of them can't afford to be unemployed even for a short time. On Twitter, for example, are among others artists who need donations to pay their rent in these hard times. Maybe more jobs will be automated away, maybe there will not be enough jobs and if there are, then some in the low-wage sector.

Quote: "That's just progress!"
It sounds like progress, but is it?
Definition: "positively valued advancement; attainment of a higher stage of development.
"rapid, astonishing, tangible progress"
" [Source: Oxford Languages, Translated.]
But is this development positive or advancing?
Let's assume that AI replaces the art scene as of today.
Millions of people become unemployed, but there is cheap art in abundance. Millions of users use these AI applications to create art. There will be an unprecedented amount of data and already today humanity is producing too much data. This is an amount of data that is looked at once and then rots on some PC. People shy away from making art because too much work, it's easier and faster with AI. Art becomes a stagnant homogeneous mass because there are no new ideas and considerations. Where is the progress there. We have mass unemployment in the creative scene, "gray" art and huge amounts of data garbage.

Another example: Amazon wanted cages to confine their workers during work. Thus, they should work more effectively and take fewer breaks. Amazon also wanted to monitor and minimize breaks. (Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/busine.....op-of-a-robot/)
Now that's progress! Everyone likes packages from Amazon, so now everyone gets packages from Amazon even faster (especially when it's on fire). So that's not ok, but replacing people and using their own works for that among others is ok?

Moreover, one should not compare this with an assembly line job. Because the artists have fun with their projects, they like to do it, they have made their hobby into a profession, there are celebrities in this field. Assembly line jobs, on the other hand, are monotonous and often boring.

Quote: "You just don't like AIs!"
AIs are a good development. If they are used correctly, they can become important tools. For example, DeepL or automatic spell checkers in text programs or messengers. These are actually tools because if I didn't have a translator program with AI, for example, then I wouldn't have gotten an English teacher and looked up the words in a dictionary instead. So this AI technology doesn't replace jobs because it's actually a tool as opposed to AI art.
Generally automating jobs is actually dumb in concept. Because people have to work somewhere and if there are not enough jobs, or not enough jobs in the respective salary and education class, there will be unemployment. One should ask oneself, does it make sense to let a production run faster? Is the demand really that great? Are there really so many people who need a car now, for example, and would buy it at full price? Production by automation only makes sense if the demand is strongly steady and the current production cannot cover this demand. And besides, the good should also be important for the general public. In the case of art, there is great demand, but great demand for a variety of art. The need we need to look at here is the need for personalized art and this is actually well met by commission artists. Moreover, personalized art is not an essential commodity, that is, it is not a commodity that clients need to live better or survive. Personalized art is a luxury good, but artists need this work to survive and exist. So logically it makes little sense to automate this work.

Quote, "There will always be people who buy commissions."
This is an assumption I have also heard many times. This assumption is that people with the money will always buy commissions and only those who cannot afford commissions will switch to AI. However, should one rely on this? Let's assume that is the case. But then this would be the last straw, the last method of financing for artists. But if you're wrong, and there won't be these people, then artists won't be able to finance themselves through this. Of course, there would still be Patreon, but if you get everything for free through an AI anyway, why should you still become Patreon. Sure, there are people who want to support artists, but most Patreon users are there for the benefits. Also, the pandemic and inflation have made people have less money to spend on commissions, for example. Many will therefore have a taste for free AIs.

In addition, one should also think of artists in the industry. Take concept artists, for example. Blizzard, for example, has massively fired employees despite a good year in order to maximize profits. (Source: https://www.engadget.com/2019-02-12.....0piuzzSI2mB73uvIIVWU8--dKIFQnmAjgtbB3nykcQ06DqRNuXCQYeAyG4KGua9vOVyo_CgiHR5yfPiNzGRmf_8uKHIBRcTCliLPx1YlfkLbPw8HqAkjZtkjWuU3n-kuaW4b0wrYwj38OjTQ-J4pPP7FxZNn9-d3gi0jrX_w6T )
Why would they hire artists at all if a computer could do everything for them?

It will simply be difficult for artists to finance themselves in the future. And especially in those times, it's better not to rely on an assumption.

Quote: "AI remains free!"
The majority of AIs are created by companies. Some of them are non-profit. However, behind many of the companies there are profit-oriented companies, which is somehow suspicious. My guess, and it's just a guess, is that non-profit companies are setting up additional companies to avoid getting in trouble for copyright infringement.
One boss of an AI company was even a former hedge fund manager. I think that says a lot about these companies.

However, the companies naturally want to make a profit at some point. Because without would be pointless. I suspect that expensive subscription models will appear later. And anyone who thinks AIs will remain free has probably not understood capitalism.

Personal words: "Are the artists really worth so little to you?"
I love the fandom. I looked up to my great idols back then and wanted/want to be just as good and it's a real shame that future generations might not be interested in this craft anymore. The developers of these algorithms don't give a shit about the artists, you won't find anything about artists on any of their advertising pages. People who use and spread such algorithms and develop them further with their use are stabbing a knife in the back of the artists who built this fandom. It's a pity that even some of my idols are positively interested in these algorithms and don't even think about it critically at least once. Maybe they will notice something if someone uses their artworks as a data base for AI and claims the results. Because some AI creations today already look very suspiciously like art styles of other artists. Artists should be rightly angry at these programs! I find it sad that so many have forgotten how to think critically.
I mean, there are people who post something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/furry_irl/.....yu/update_irl/.
(And something like this gets 2.5k upvotes...)

And really, can't you even make a little effort? Anyone can learn to draw and if you're already too lazy for that, you'll be even lazier with the AI generation of images! I honestly find this development really sad.

Further developments
Other AIs are already being worked on. Dance Diffusion, for example, is supposed to do something similar with music. Amazon is working on an AI that remembers your voice and can talk like you or your friends/family. I mean, after all, who doesn't want to have commercials read to them by their dead grandma? (Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazo.....eased-grandma/ ) AI is already being used to fake people on social networks. Maybe someone knows about the Twitter spam bots.

AI is a development that absolutely must be regulated. For the good of workers, data protection and copyright.

What can I do?
Don't use these programs, don't spread them by paying attention to them, and don't treat them like real art. As harsh as it may sound. But this is the only way to prevent a dystopia in the art world. Think of the people who made the art world great. Think of all the animators and game developers. With every training of the AI by using it, the art world goes one step further towards the abyss...

What can I do as an artist?
Get mad at these algorithms and show that you are better than an AI. Don't use them as a "tool", you are better than that. Show users that they are not better than people who can operate Google. (So by doing and not verbally).
If any people claim that an AI would be better than an artist in any way, don't ignore them, respond and argue. Convince them, show that they are wrong and fight for your existence. And if people don't change their minds, at least you have publicly shown that they are wrong. Every time you ignore it, the problem gets bigger. Do not avoid conflicts, but convince with arguments.
And learn to argue.
Stay strong, get closer together and don't let this development get you down. You will face perhaps the greatest challenge in the history of art. I love every artist who still does his work himself and puts effort into his works.

Conclusion
AIs are an exciting development, but you should be careful what you use them for. AIs can help humanity, develop it and make things much easier and faster. However, one should be careful what one uses them for. If used in a wrong or greedy way, it can change existences, our society or essential things in a very negative way or even destroy them. Regulations are needed, but we cannot rely on them. People whom it affects or could affect should act. In general, we should be more critical of new technology instead of simply embracing it.

We will see how this develops in the future and I will then come back to this letter. I also do not want to impose responsibility or action on you. After all, it is always allowed to contribute other opinions on the subject, or experiences, after all, there is freedom of speech. But please do not argue with arguments that have already been sufficiently refuted in the text.


If you want to see a very good video on the subject from an experienced artist, I can recommend this one: https://youtu.be/tjSxFAGP9Ss

PS: Remember: Genesys is Skynet.
And Happy Halloween.